SURKHET, NEPAL – Kalu Saru, 39, repairs the earthen stove in her house in Surkhet, a district in western Nepal, while her husband, Dambar Saru, basks in the morning sun in their courtyard. Their two daughters, Bishnu, 20, and Roshni, 22, busy themselves around the house. The sounds of cattle, goats and roosters hang in the rural air.
“Even though I gave birth to two daughters, my family is happy and peaceful,” Saru says.
Nepalese culture makes sons a necessary part of the family. Parents rely on sons to support them financially when they grow old, to perform their funeral rites when they die and to inherit their property.
Saru gave birth to her first daughter two years after her arranged marriage to her husband. Two years later, she gave birth to another girl.
The couple knew they could support only two children, Saru says. So her husband obtained a vasectomy in 1994 instead of trying again for a boy or abandoning her for another woman who could give him a son.
“The happiest thing in my life is that my husband didn’t marry another woman even though I gave birth to girls only,” Saru says.
But six months later, his mother started nagging him that she needed a grandson, she says. Her husband finally told his parents, whom they were living with at the time, that they would not be having any more children.
“When the parents knew it, they considered their son as good as dead without any male inheritor,” she says.
Saru’s in-laws hold her responsible for not producing a son to perform the traditional Hindu funeral rites after a parent’s death, she says. Their neighbors also constantly humiliated her for giving birth to only girls. This finally forced them to move out of the parents’ house.
“We were compelled to live separately at a place five kilometers away,” Saru says.
This had financial repercussions on the young family.
“My husband’s teaching profession was not enough financially to support the upbringing of the two girls,” Saru says. “It was difficult to make both ends meet.”
The move also affected their daughters’ education.
“We moved our daughters from the private school to the government one, where quality education was lacking,” Saru says.
But now, their daughters are doing well in school, Saru says. Her daughters say their parents’ love counts more than society’s views.
“Whatever our relatives and the society may comment, we sisters are loved as sons by our parents,” says Roshni Saru, who is pursuing her bachelor’s degree.
Kalu Saru is also working to change the culture locally as a member of Santoshi Pariwar Samaj, Nepal’s lone organization of mothers with only daughters who advocate against discrimination in society.
Nepalese parents depend on sons to carry out various cultural practices, so women who give birth to only daughters face abandonment by their husbands, relatives and society. Santoshi Pariwar Samaj is the only nongovernmental organization in Nepal that unites mothers of daughters. The group seeks to eradicate social stigma against them by raising awareness in the community and collaborating on income-generation and savings schemes to send their daughters to school.
Purna Kumari Subedi, former deputy speaker of the dissolved Constituent Assembly of Nepal, attributes the stigma against women who give birth to only daughters to illiteracy, lack of awareness and education, poverty, patriarchal thinking, superstitious beliefs and traditional social attitudes.
The cultural preference for sons has positioned husbands, relatives and society to stigmatize mothers who give birth to only daughters.
Patriarchal thinking and male dominant structure in the Hindu culture lead husbands to abandon their wives for giving birth to only daughters and to remarry in hopes of having a son, says Parsuram Poudel, a priest in Surkhet. Although this is illegal, the practice is common unless the first wife files a legal case.
Sushmita Lamichhane, a 35-year-old mother from Surkhet, says her husband left her when she did not bear a son.
“I was abandoned by my husband after I gave birth to four daughters,” she says. “I tried hard to convince him that next time I will bear a son. My pleas and requests were in vain, and he soon remarried.”
Even when husbands are supportive, family members may shun women who only have daughters, as in Kalu Saru’s case.
Still, support from husbands and family members does not shield mothers who have only daughters from societal scorn. The burden of this discrimination falls on the mothers, not their husbands, Subedi says.
Deurupa Gharti, a 27-year-old mother from Surkhet, says that her husband’s family does not discriminate against her. Her mother-in-law supports her and helps her with doing domestic chores and raising her children.
“Even though my husband is abroad, I have not faced humiliation at all by the family,” Deurupa Gharti says. “And I am therefore very happy.”
But she says that society still spurns her for giving birth to only girls.
Her mother-in-law, Belmati Gharti, says relatives and neighbors frequently prod her to get her son remarried so he produces a grandson to perform his parents’ funeral rites and to continue the family lineage. But she says she ignores them.
“Who can see you after you are dead?” she asks. “Therefore, even daughters should be allowed to perform the death rites.”
Belmati Gharti says she does not care about her grandchildren’s sexes.
“Sons and daughters are equally fine with me,” she says. “I will educate my granddaughters as I did with my son.”
Parents tend toward marrying off their daughters rather than sending them to school, especially among lower-income families in Surkhet, where education levels are low.
Few women are lucky enough to have such a supportive family, Deurupa Gharti says. She aims to share this support with other women through serving as secretary of Santoshi Pariwar Samaj.
Khagi Saru, a mother of two daughters in Surkhet who is not related to Karu Saru, established Santoshi Pariwar Samaj in 2009. There is no other nongovernmental organization in the country with the same objective to support women who only have daughters, the founder says.
Subedi confirms that this organization is unique.
“There are many women’s groups, but this is for the first time that I heard about the women giving birth to [a] girl child being united,” she says, “and this kind of unity is a challenge against the discriminatory patriarchal society. The state should formally or informally honor these daring and exemplary groups.”
Khima Poudel, senior clerk at Surkhet’s district administration office, who is not related to Parsuram Poudel, says that registering a nongovernmental organization to support women who have only daughters is courageous because it is the first of its kind in Nepal.
The group chose its name, which translates to Satisfied Family Society, because it comprises women who give birth to only daughters but still live happily, says Nandaram Adhikari, an adviser to the society.
More than 20 mothers with only daughters are members, says Parbati Mijar, the society’s chairwoman. In addition, 25 mothers have applied recently for membership.
But some of Surkhet’s mothers of only daughters fear becoming members, Mijar says.
“Many women who have only daughters do not come forward because of the fear of the family and the society,” Mijar says. “The society is actively working to establish the right of the women and to secure the future of the daughters of those women.”
Mijar says the organization aims to create a society free of discrimination against these mothers. This includes preventing women from suffering marital abuse by their husbands for not bearing sons.
The organization also helps these mothers, who come from low-income families, to identify and participate in programs to become self-reliant. It introduces income-generation activities and communal savings plans to members to fund their daughters’ education.
The members each contribute a small sum of 10 Nepalese rupees (12 cents) per month to the society, Deurupa Gharti says. The group has saved 8,000 rupees ($90) together since its establishment.
The savings pay for books, stationery and dresses for all local families in need who have only daughters so they can send them to school, Deurupa Gharti says. The group prioritizes education for these daughters to raise their value in society after the stigma their mothers have faced.
Tuition for government schools is free, but families bear all other costs, which range from 10 rupees (12 cents) to 2,000 rupees ($25) per girl depending on her class level, says Gopal Sapkota, the accountant at Shree Nepal National Higher Secondary School in Surkhet.
The local government in Kunathari, a village development committee in Surkhet, also gave 10,000 rupees ($115) to the society in 2010 and 15,000 rupees ($175) in 2011 for income-generating activities, says Deurupa Gharti and Lal Bahadur K.C., the village development committee secretary.
But the society did not learn of the donation until a year later, Mijar says. Deurupa Gharti says the group then deposited part of the money in a local cooperative bank to earn interest and distributed the rest to members so they could maintain their goats and buy their daughters dresses.
Parsuram Poudel says that education is the most important way to empower daughters. But he says that their mothers still face stigma for not having sons.
“In Nepal, over the last few years, there have been some positive changes in properly raising a girl child,” Poudel says. “But the mother who gives birth to a girl child is still humiliated far and wide.”
Kalu Saru says that Santoshi Pariwar Samaj’s work improves how Surkhet society views mothers who have only daughters.
“No one now hates us for not having sons,” she says. “Our two daughters are studying very well. Our neighbors are also getting lessons through our example. Our society is not discriminating [against] me these days. Other local women who have only daughters have been encouraged to get united.”
