Seika Sato’s book Women in ‘New’ Nepal: Through the Lens of Classed, Ethnic, and Gendered Peripheries, published by Routledge in 2023 is an investigation into various groups of women in Nepal and their lived realities. These realities are shaped by their marginality in the country, not just based on gender, but also along the lines of their class and ethnic status. With these multiple layers of intersecting marginalisations in play, Sato examines, through mostly ethnographic fieldwork but also secondary sources and discourse analysis, the emotions and desires of her respondents and depicts how they navigate the social, institutional, and structural hindrances that plague them.

The book is a collection of essays written by the author based on fieldwork conducted as early as 2003 to around 2012 in and around Kathmandu. While much has changed for women in Nepal in the last decade, and, as the author accepts, the underrepresentation of Nepali women away from the capital city is a drawback, this book makes a rich contribution to research on women in Nepal in that it attempts to bring together the stories of women from different walks of life by bringing out the institutional and discursive arrangements that are common to their lives (p. 9). This multi-sited study, which ‘justifiably’ excludes high-caste, middle and upper-class women in Nepal, aptly makes use of feminist methodology, centring and exploring ‘experience’ in its journey. Sato adopts the classic way of ethnography by intending to grasp what Malinowski called ‘imponderabilia of actual life’ and follows through well through most chapters.

Chapter 1 of the book explores the kind of work that women do in the construction sector, their experiences and opinions about that work, their expectations from and after what they do, and their performance of speaking about it. Sato rightly begins her examination without an assumption of dissatisfaction among the women and connects us to her respondents’ ways of analysing and feeling their situation. Through this and the other two chapters in the first section of the book, Sato brings into focus the reality that class differences are an important reality in Nepal that cannot be relegated to the side despite the simultaneous realities of ethnic marginalisation.

The unfavourable conditions for domestic workers, as explored in Chapter 2 of the book, the unjust treatment of the workers by the employers, and the social stigma that comes with this occupation are why women in this sector are striving to get out. While this particular study could have also benefitted from a brief exploration of the soft untouchability that continues to be practised in many homes with regard to domestic workers and their involvement in the kitchens of upper-caste families, the chapter brings to light domestic workers’ struggle for the status of ‘workers’ as they continue to work without any basic rights and at the discretion of their employers.

Such a lack of formal status and social protection is further highlighted in Chapter 3 which considers ‘self-employed’ (author’s quotations) street vendors, their thoughts, and their aspirations of upward mobility. The chapter and its realisation of economic disparities between workers in this sector and thus the difficulties that may arise in coming together and working on concrete agendas are particularly relevant today as the authorities force street vendors out of the streets of Kathmandu without leaving any space or medium whatsoever to communicate one’s troubles to them.

Sato’s investigation into the Hyolmos, an indigenous community in Nepal, in section 2 and the various kinds of mobility that they practice provides an interesting observation of Hyolmo women’s movements and their impact on the gendered order of the community. The particular ethnic community’s norms and practices and the varied, i.e. both fruitful and burdensome, experiences of Hyolmo women’s movements are intertwined with one another. This is particularly outstanding in the case of Dolma whose story conveys to us the realities of what it is to be a woman in the Hyolmo society. The in-depth exploration of Dolma’s feminism and its relatability leads us right into the final section of the book particularly the last chapter which brings together the experiences of various women in examining the common challenges and harassment that Nepali women face for daring to exist in public spaces.

The chapter elaborately examines the violent encounters in public spaces and the exclusionary societal discourse around sexuality that women face in their everyday lives. It highlights something that all Nepali women inevitably go through, supported by an examination of class and ethnic/caste peripheries that affect women in each of the previous chapters. The book, thus, adequately emphasises through its methodological stance the need for an intimate examination of women’s experiences, their needs, their feelings, and their aspirations to be able to capture the nuanced differences as well as the common thread that answers the question of what it is to be a woman in contemporary Nepal. The book is central at the beginning of a comprehensive evaluation of women in ‘New Nepal’.

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Avantika Jhujhunwala is a Researcher in Social Science Baha, Kathmandu, Nepal