KATHMANDU, July 24: For centuries, both in Nepal and abroad, women have been subjected to oppression, violence and injustice. The patriarchal structure of the society often enforces barbaric beliefs that favors the men while deprives the innocent, independent women of their freedom.
Consider, for example, the wave of violence that stormed through Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth century. Any women, who were bold enough to defy the societal norms, were accused of witchcraft and, after a humiliating display in public, were burnt alive in the most inhuman manner.
“Such acts are a prototypical manifestation of insecure men’s mentality,” says one of the experts on gender violence. “When a woman strives to rise, most men, especially those who are frustrated with their own lives tend to fill the void by oppressing strong women. In a way, that gives joy to such men.”
While Europe has managed to shake off the claws of gender violence to an extent, Nepal, though it aspires to embrace modernism like the west, remains swamped in the quagmire of oppressive traditions. Of the many age-old practices, directed at cutting off the wings of women and rendering them helpless, the practice of ‘Chhaugoth’ remains one of the most shameful. Forcing women during their period to live in unhygienic, isolated sheds, where usually animals are kept, is an undeniable evidence that our country still remains shackled in the chains of superstitions. “It’s a thing,” said Divya Tamang, a social worker. “Our girls and women are still treated like slaves, even worse, like animals. How shameful it is to see such practices while we boast, on social media and elsewhere, of a better Nepal.”
15-yr-old dies in Chhaupadi shed
This practice of ‘Chhaugoths’ is killing our daughters and mothers. On 10th July, Saturday, for example, Kamala Aauji, a 28-year-old resident of Nigali Kanchanpur, died from a snake bite while sleeping in the poorly-equipped menstruation shed. She would still have been with us had she not been forced to sleep outside the house merely because she was having her periods. Likewise, last year, in 2024, a sixteen-year-old girl was raped by one of her own relatives while sleeping in the menstruation hut in Panchdewal Binayak Municipality-2, Achham.
Numerous incidents of such repentable nature have torn the hearts of sensitive people and yet the practice remains alive in the society. Women need family support and love during their periods when their body undergoes changes. Not only emotional support, females also need physical care during their period, for due to bleeding their body tends to become weak and they need good rest and nutritious diet. “All people who menstruate should have access to accurate information, safe and hygienic menstrual products, and supportive environments,” advises WHO. But instead women in Nepal are stigmatized and isolated, forced to live in dirty sheds.
In fact, menstruation is a blessing. It is a sign that a girl has become a woman. It indicates that she can now give birth to a baby by raising the child in her womb for nine months. This beautiful natural process, however, is cruelly judged by our patriarchal society, which is a regretful thing.
Girls are an indispensable part of our world and they complete it. So how can they be counted as impure for seven days every month for a process that is associated with creation of life? How can we force them into the dark when they are the actual spark of life? In our country, there are rituals to put tika on the little girl, and elderly people touch the feet of the girls, and they are worshipped as goddesses. But ironically, this is the same place where home is believed to become cursed if girls stay there during their menstruation.
When asked about her first menstruation experience, Babita, an 11-year-old girl, replied lamentfully, “In last tihar, I got my first menstruation. The time where I wanted to celebrate with my little brother, but I didn’t even get to see him. Everyone was enjoying themselves and I was not even allowed to come out of goth.” She remained silent for a while, and her innocent silence seemed to say, “It’s okay to be a girl but being a girl from a rural area feels actually an unlucky thing in this case and I have felt it.”
Our culture teaches us to worship women as goddesses. But at the same time people in rural areas believe that girls need to be away from home during menstruation (girls are wrongly believed to be impure during this time). In the first menstruation, a little one has to stay in goth for 15 days, for 9 days in the second one and for 7 days from next time. They stay in the goth during these days. Some are forced to live under leaking straw roofs where they get soaked in monsoon downpour and suffer cold in long, lonely nights. Some women even get bitten by snakes. How scary would their lonely nights be in those open huts? Isn’t this all tragic?
Though efforts have been made, both at the national and international level, progress in addressing and eliminating the practice of ‘Chhaupadi Pratha’ is yet to be seen. “Although the resolution on dignified menstruation was unanimously passed on March 21, 2025, no initiative or work has been done by the three levels of government or other state bodies,” said Dr. Radha Poudel, a global activist for ‘Dignified Menstruation’, while talking with Republica. “Efforts to break the fear ingrained in people’s minds through awareness campaigns are needed, but such efforts have not taken place.”
Of course, efforts at the legal level are important. However, more important is to bring enlightenment among people at the social level. Everyone, who enforces this inhuman practise of ‘Chhaupadi Pratha’, should ask themselves: If women are impure during their menstruation, the same women who bring new life into this world, then are we, who came from the womb of a woman, the pure soul or does our home become uncursed if we make them suffer?
