Public Lecture
Conceptual Framework and
Key Findings of the Report
UNEQUAL CITIZENS: Gender,
Caste and Ethnic Exclusion in Nepal
By Dr. Lynn
Bennett,
Lead Social Scientist, World Bank
Date: Friday, 2
June, 2006
Time: 4:30 – 6:30 p.m.
Venue: Malla Hotel, Lainchour, Kathmandu.
Organized by
Social Science
Baha
and the Social
Inclusion Research Fund Secretariat, SNV
Abstract
“There are many ways to
understand social exclusion/inclusion. This lecture
presents one understanding of the concept as it has
been used by the team working on the DFID/World Bank
supported Nepal Gender and Social Exclusion
Assessment (GSEA) which has recently been published
as UNEQUAL CITIZENS. The GSEA examines gender,
caste and ethnicity as three interlocking
institutions or “rules of the game” that determine
individual and group access to assets, capabilities
and voice based on socially defined identity. It
looks at the difficult process of social change
towards a more equitable polity that Nepal has been
going through as an outcome of the complementary
forces of empowerment and social
inclusion. Empowerment is seen as coming
“from below” and involves realization by the
excluded of their own individual and collective
agency or power to act. Social inclusion is seen as
a system-level and ultimately political process that
is of course contested because it involves
transformation of a complex set of social, cultural,
political and economic institutions that have for
centuries favored Nepal's feudal and "upper-caste"
elite. Social inclusion is seen as both a goal of
and a means to genuine democracy. In addition to
sharing the conceptual framework, the lecture will
also present empirical evidence gathered by the GSEA
team on the link between gender, caste and ethnicity
based social exclusion and the economic, human
development and political dimensions of poverty.”
Back to top
Dr. Lynn Bennett
spent most of her earlier career studying and
working in villages in South Asia. As a PhD student
at Columbia, her early work was that of a typical
academic anthropologist. The results of her first
five years of research among Hindu women in Nepal
was published as a book entitled Dangerous Wives
and Sacred Sisters – which is now being
used as a text for Women’s Studies by universities
in Nepal.
Once she got her
degree, Dr. Bennett turned more and more to applied
development work, leading a major three-year
research project on the social and economic status
of women in Nepal at Tribhuvan University;
developing one of the first group-based credit
projects for women as a Project Officer in UNICEF,
Nepal; and then, working for the Ford Foundation in
New Delhi as Program Officer for Rural Poverty and
Resources.
Dr. Bennett joined
the World Bank in 1988 at the New Delhi Office where
her first job was to prepare a major report on
Gender and Poverty in India. From 1991 to 1997
she served as Gender Coordinator for the Asia Region
where she led a Bank-wide research team on
“Sustainable Banking with the Poor” that produced
the Microfinance Handbook. Between 1997 and
2001 she served as Director for Social Development
in the South Asia Region in the World Bank. For the
last 3 and a half years, she has been with the World
Bank in Nepal where her main work has been on the
joint DFID-World Bank Gender and Social Exclusion
Assessment (GSEA) that she will share with us in
this lecture.
(Guests are invited to tea before the lecture)
Seats
are limited. Please call 5548142 or write to ssbaha@wlink.com.np
to confirm your place.
|
