Education, gender, and generational change: The transformation of dowry in village Nepal

Abstract

In a small Bahun village in Gorkha district, West Nepal, in only one generation, there has been a huge shift to educating young women and including them in modernity. Ideologies of 'gender equality' in education that are promoted in development programs and discourse, and in Maoist rhetoric, have been powerful drivers behind this. In this paper I highlight the gender and generational dynamics of the changing relationship of women to education in Nepal. I argue that the move to educating women is not a simple one, nor is it necessarily a development success story. The importance placed on educating the younger generation, including women, is also very much tied to local Bahun culture, marriage values and status. Bahun villagers of Ludigaun place great importance on both education and marriage. When combined, I argue, education has in fact become dowry. While there have been transformations in education and other modernising processes, as well as in dowry practices, in this paper I show that they have come to maintain traditional hierarchies and to support the status making of the educated Bahun man.

Human–buffalo conflicts and intimacies in ‘modernising’ Nepal

“…His conquests allowed the Gorkhali elite to move into Kathmandu valley and the middle hills and establish the Bahun/Chhetris as the ruling class (Blaikie et al,1980;Gellner, 1991;Leve, 2002). As ruling-class Bahuns from Gorkha, villagers in Ludigaun are proud of this history and, in terms of development and educational opportunities, they have benefited from it (Fuller, 2018(Fuller, , 2020.…”

“…The family conflict over buffalo demonstrates that while caste and gendered 'labouring hierarchies' (Cameron, 1998, p. 237) still underpin village life, instabilities have arisen largely because their contemporary forms are further shaped by education, out-migration and 'development' (Fuller, 2020), which exist and are linked inextricably within the village, and also incorporate the village into a global system of increasing extension and intensity (Harvey, 1990). In Ludigaun today the configuration of relationships around agriculture remain embedded in place.…”

“…Arguably, the greatest impact of modernising and development projects, encompassing education and out-migration, is their impact on identity politics and personhood (Ahearn, 2001;Carney and Rappleye, 2011;Fuller, 2020;Leve, 2007;Nightingale, 2005;Pigg, 1996;Snellinger, 2016). 'Development' creates otherness -'the "illiterate", the "underdeveloped", the "malnourished"' (Escobar & Harcourt, 2005, p. 41), the 'traditional' and 'modern' (Cameron, 2008;Pigg, 1992Pigg, , 1997, and more recently, the 'uneducated' or 'non-educated' person (Castellsagué & Carrasco, 2020, p. 2).…”

“…'Development', therefore, frames local socio-cultural practices, including gendered and environmental practices, with lasting gendered and ecological outcomes (Ahearn, 2001;Castellsagué & Carrasco, 2020, p. 4;Leve, 2007;Nightingale, 2005;Pigg, 1996). These tensions are at the heart of everyday life in Ludigaun (Fuller, 2020).…”

“…It is an intimate 'mode of care' that is integral to village social reproduction; women's work with buffalo (although it has no positive status of its own) demonstrates that the older generation of women are not passive but active players in constituting caste, gendered and social status identities. It helps their husbands and children to become mobile, educated and migrated, thereby facilitating their husband's and children's upward mobility (Fuller, 2018(Fuller, , 2020 and it is integral to women's subjectivities -as Bahun wives, mothers and daughters-in-law who are subordinate members of the household (Bennett, 1983). Keeping buffalo is fundamental to the ways in which an older generation of Bahun women exert their influence in Ludigaun.…”