The upcoming national census, officially called the Nepal Census on Population and Housing 2001, promises to bring women to the forefront of national statistics. And this number crunching will help planners adopt more specifically targeted policies to address women's needs in development projects and programmes. Development activists who work in gender-related areas hope that accurate statistics on women will also mean more realistic allocation of funds for their development and welfare.
From 10 to 21 June, 27,000 census employees, including 20,000 enumerators, will spread out through the country to find out more about the complex situations of individuals and families. Carrying out the census and processing the data will cost the government Rs 400 million.
Census 2001 is the first time Nepal's national survey will shed light on women's status and their contribution to the national economy through what development experts like to call "gender disaggregated data". Pakistan and India revised their most recent census questionnaires to accommodate data on women's economic activities. Bangladesh's census this year focused on another area traditionally seen as gender-specific, birth control and infant mortality. What makes Nepal's census questionnaire unique compared with that of her neighbours' is that it includes questions that will hopefully provide answers about a woman's status within her family, in addition to her undocumented and generally uncounted economic activities.
"The upcoming census is designed to reflect the condition and positioning of women within families," says Saru Joshi-Shrestha, a gender training specialist with the UNDP-funded Mainstreaming Gender Equity Programme. Questions related to marital status have also been revised and seen some additions. Much to the delight of anthropologists and social scientists, the revised questionnaire asks questions about polygamy and polyandry, separation, divorce and re-marriage, and people's age at their first marriage. This census will finally shed some light on anthropologists' claim that widow re-marriage is not stigmatised among some ethnic groups in Nepal. Questions like this will come in handy in order to understand the status of women within the household in different ethnic groups/communities in various geographic locations. All the earlier census did was ask the marital status of a person.
Despite the assertions of the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) about the kind of conclusions the data will allow them to draw, and generous support from a consortium of donors, including various United Nations bodies, the real challenge in collecting gender-sensitive data lies in imparting the right kind of gender education and sensitisation to the enumerators. For instance, questions regarding women's access to and control over family property were finally dropped from the census questionnaire because during the pilot census held last year, the enumerators were confused about women's ownership rights and control over immovable property. The pilot census found that in the tarai district of Mahottari, land is normally registered in a woman's name, but they are not allowed to make crucial decisions over that land or other family property. Urban middle class women, on the other hand, seemed to have more of a say in issues of family property even if it was registered in the name of a male family member.
Another important revision made to the questionnaire is the collection of data about the cause of death. It is currently estimated that 539 of every 100,000 women die during childbirth. The census will help determine more accurately the maternal mortality rate, and also perhaps help in estimating how many deaths are due to unsafe abortions. The health sector also hopes to figure out the number of undiagnosed, unregistered AIDS deaths.
Donors and NGOs working for the empowerment of women will also now have a chance to review and redesign intervention strategies. The census will focus on assessing the achievements of informal education interventions in the empowerment of women. Unlike previous censuses, Census 2001 will also count "absent women"-previous censuses assumed that female family members do not migrate abroad. Empowerment agencies expect this question will help provide a sense of how many women have been trafficked, how many have willingly migrated for economic reasons either overseas or to other parts of Nepal, and how many have married across the border.
"Cultural differences and the literacy level of communities will make a huge difference to the quality of the final data," says Radha Krishna GC, deputy director of CBS. The outcome of the pilot census provides ample proof. Of the four districts selected to pre-test the Census 2001 questionnaire, the enumerators found it difficult to develop a rapport with and obtain accurate information from respondents in the tarai district of Mahottari and the far-west district of Bajura compared to the eastern hill district of Dhankuta and Kathmandu. In Bajura and Mahottari, people were not enthusiastic about answering questions probing personal and family details.
Apart from these area-specific problems, there are other more general "Nepali" values that might prove to be obstacles in finding out more about the situation of women. People traditionally don't recognise a woman as the head of a household. Even educated urban women, for instance, may not be comfortable naming a female member as the head of the family even if the token male head has been absent for a long time. The 1991 census reported only 13 percent women-headed households, which seems implausible given the male migration trend for employment. The Nepal Labour Force Survey 1998/1999 shows that almost one million people, approximately three quarters of them male, migrated from far-western Nepal to India in search of jobs.
The other major focus of this census, then, is women's participation in the economy. For the first time, Census 2001 will recognise household sector activities, such as primary and secondary processing of goods, as economic activities in line with the UN System of National Accounting (SNA) 1993 and the recent International Labour Organisation (ILO) definition of "work". SNA 1993 greatly widened the definition of "production" to secondary processing like tailoring and making mats for household use, and activities like fodder- and firewood-collection, fetching water, and food processing-all these are now economic activities. This shift in the definition of work has major implications in calculating women's economic contribution. But Census 2001 isn't as radical as it seems. Unlike this year's Indian census, domestic activities like cooking for the family and looking after children and the elderly-women's contribution to the social sector-will remain unaccounted for.
To ensure that women's social and economic realities are questioned from a female perspective, the CBS wants at least 20 percent of the enumerators in all districts to be female. Teachers are one of the main groups mobilised as enumerators, and as all primary schools are required by law to have at least one female teacher, it shouldn't be too hard to maintain this percentage. But people like Meena Acharya, an economist crusading for gender disaggregated data since the 1970s, does not find much to celebrate. "Recruiting 20 percent female enumerators does not help much. We should focus on increasing the number of women at the supervisor or area supervisor levels, if not at the level of district census officer," she said. Her concerns will not be addressed for some time-of the 90 district census officers appointed so far, only five
are women.
Apart from its focus on creating gender disaggregated data, the Census 2001 will also ask questions about ethnicity, the situation of disabled people, child labourers and children at risk.
