GEETA DANGOL MAHARJAN

Geeta is from Nepal and she is the founder and director of Orange Butterflies (Women Empowerment Centre), a non-profit organisation for women in her community that encourages them towards entrepreneurship by providing different levels of skills. Geeta aspires to take this community service to the next level by broadening organisation's services.

“Women should be treated and respected equally in every aspect of society”

Q: Tell us a few things about you! Your background, your childhood and early beginnings!

Nepal is a strictly patriarchal country in which daughters are valued less. Nepal, pop-ups as a mysterious country when it comes to types of culture including lifetime ceremonies, especially in the Newar community. There are various rituals from the birth of a child till he/she/other dies. You may follow the link for different rituals here to know more. https://www.bhaktapur.com/discover/life- time-ceremonies-of-newars/. We have strict patriarchal rules to follow in our cultural beliefs and rituals specific to after-death rituals. The sons or the husband or wife of the dead one, wear white garments for a year and avoid eating things like yogurt, tomato, red lentil, betel nut, milk and so on. Last year my mother passed away. She had seven daughters and no son, so what to do about the rituals was the question. Among seven daughters, I took the responsibility to break the stereotype. I followed all the rituals such as wearing a completely white dress and shaving my head and eyebrows for a year and doing Shraddha and Puja to remember my loved one. Before taking on all the responsibilities also, there were lots of comments saying a daughter cannot do the rituals but I still pushed myself and broke the stereotype.

Let me take you to my past where and how I grew up. My father wanted my mother to give birth to a son. Although she had always wanted a small family with only two children, my father insisted on trying until the first son was born. Thus, she was blessed with seven daughters and I am one of them.

Listening to my mother’s stories and observing my parents’ relationship, I feel sad about her being ill-treated and marginalised by her entire family. As a child, I often watched incidents of violent attacks, and I felt helpless. There was a silence that built up between my parents due to financial dependency.

I never felt that my father was there for us during my childhood. He never took responsibility for paying fees or visiting teachers. My mother used to send money to us to pay the fees ourselves. We were terrified of him. Due to his violent character, we never had that father-daughter relationship, even when he became calm later in life.

One day, my mother’s sister-in-law suggested a business idea to my mother and she advised her to move out. Finally, after four children, my mother spoke up and got us separated from the joint family. She had no education. However, she empowered herself to start a small retail business in a new location. Slowly but steadily, the business took off. I could feel and see a change in the relationship between my parents.

Suddenly, there were bombs everywhere; Nepal was not safe anymore. The Nepalese civil war (1996 to 2006) started due to political conflicts. My parents sent my sisters and me to India for further studies. People across Nepal were moving to the capital city for safety.

I came back to my own country in 2017, only to learn that the issue had worsened and almost 500,000 people were moving out of the country every year to foreign lands for low-paying jobs due to a lack of skill sand education. Many women were left behind with household responsibilities and without any secure source of income.

This made me wonder: Why can’t we create jobs within our country? I have witnessed how my mother’s life changed after she secured her financial independence. She could decide everything for her children and family. She even became bold and taught us to become bold. I pondered over my mother’s story and could see that many women still faced the same issue: silence born of financial dependence.

I could see the impact from my own story after securing a job and fending for myself, doing way better than the male cousins in our family. My father concluded that I was as able as a boy. He slowly stopped being violent. Today, I am running my own business and a non-profit organisation for women in our community. Furthermore, I am taking care of my parents as the ‘Woman of the House’.

Now my dad is the proud father of seven daughters who are no less than any men in our community. He is now supporting the cause I am working for.

Q: What are some of the key challenges in your society currently?

1.  To mind shift on gender equality with equity.

2.  People look for easy and quick money so they don't give time to learning.

3.  People are unable to understand about the importance of having skills rather than just having educational degrees.

Q: Share with us some of the hurdles that you had to overcome in your life so far? How did you handle them?

1.  We work towards empowering marginalised community, especially single women through skills development. We face challenges to find a market for the products they make.

2.  Right now we are looking for an international market for those hand-made products made from natural fibers.

Q: Why is the role of a mentor important for you?

Guidance is always required in our life whether we are living on our own or with family. Here, I am working and living for the community and representing a whole lot of women whom I am trying to uplift their lives economically in Nepal. This is a huge task so, I not only need guidance but also all of your support to bring the impact to the community.

Q: Do you have a lesson that life has taught you and you would like to share?  

Yes, of course. As I mentioned earlier. I grew up in a strict patriarchal family. My father never believed that even girls can do wonders. After I completed my studies I was financially independent and was doing much better than other male counterparts in the community. He started supporting my work and now he is one of the well-wishers in our organisation.

Q: Name a project, a foundation or a person in your country that you think is doing great work in helping improve other people's lives! 

Rita Thapa, Founder of Tewa is one of the people I look up to. I get inspired by her vision and work. https://tewa.org.np/.

Q: What are some of the challenges that women in your country face and what efforts are being made towards gender equality?

The most challenging part is due to lack of financial independence, women can't raise a voice against any decision made by their family members or their husbands. We are working towards empowering women by providing skills and later securing jobs for them.

Q: Share with us a motto you live by.

We believe that women should be treated and respected equally in every aspect of society. Opportunities should be open for all without any gender discrimination.

I believe in integrity, accountability, collaboration and teamwork and I am committed to the work that we do.

Q: If you had all the money needed to launch the project of your dreams, can you describe what you would do?

I would like to set up a vocational training centre for women from across the country providing residential options as well as a daycare centre where their babies will be taken care of while they learn and work.

Apart from this, I would like to have a cooperative business for the women, where they can work after learning skills and a healthcare centre for them with all the basic facilities.

Q: Anything else that you may wish to add?

We are looking forward to the support from across the globe to bring gender equality to the community and to make the dream come true.