The failure in the previous Miss Nepal beauty pageant did not stop the beauty queen from competing in the 2021 edition of the Miss Universe Nepal.

This is the second time Basnet competed in the Miss Universe Nepal competition. However, this time she did not come home empty handed.

The glamour queen won the prestigious crown of Oriflame Miss Universe Nepal 2021.

Exiting the 2020 Miss Universe Nepal pageant as first runner up, Basnet bounced back with a bang.

This year, she improved her position and won title award along with cash prize of NPR 10 lakh.

With the prestigious crown on her crown, she would be representing the Himalayan nation at the 70th edition of Miss Universe 2021.

Also Read: Miss Nepal Beauty Pageant Winners List From 1994-2020

The international beauty pageant is being held on December 12, 2021 in Eilat, Israel.

Titleholders at Miss Universe Nepal 2021:

• Sujita Basnet – Miss Universe Nepal Winner
• Nina Kant Mandal – Miss Universe Nepal First Runner-up
• Rakshya Upreti – Miss Universe Nepal Second Runner-up
• Pratikshya Mahara Chhetri – Miss Universe Nepal Third Runner-up
• Keshu Khadka – Miss Universe Nepal Fourth Runner-up

Apart from the title award, Sujitha also won Miss Fierce and Miss Fabulous awards. Likewise, the first runner-up Nina was successful at Miss Lifestyle and Miss Free and Fearless awards.

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Purnima, along with 19 team members, scaled the 8,167-metre peak located at Dhaulagiri Rural Municipality-4 in Myagdi district at 5 AM today.

The mountaineering team had started their climb on September 18 from Marpha of Mustang district with the management of the Seven Summit Trekking Company, Kathmandu.

“This is the first ascent to Mt. Dhaulagiri by a Nepali woman. Prior to this, there is no record of Nepali woman climbing to Mt Dhaulagiri before,” said the trekking company’s head Mingma Sherpa.

However, it is yet to be confirmed whether Shrestha and other members of the expedition team ascended to the top of the mountain.

Photojournalist by profession, Purnima earlier this year scaled Mt. Annapurna-I on April 16. Likewise, she also successfully scaled world’s tallest peaks Mt. Everest, Mt. Manaslu and Mt. Amadablam.

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Nepal’s popular beauty pageant organizer Ribbon Entertainment Pvt. Ltd. has officially announced the international franchised event Mrs. Nepal World 2021. All the aspiring Nepali married women can register and take part in the competition.

During the official announcement, the Ribbon Entertainment team has informed that the latest edition of the Mrs. Nepal International has been improvised to Mrs. Nepal World.

The top three winners of the Mrs. Nepal World would be crowned as Mrs. Nepal World, Mrs. Nepal International, and Ms. Nepal International.

The winner of the Mrs. Nepal World 2021 title would represent the Himalayan nation at the Mrs. World 2022 pageant.

Likewise, Mrs. Nepal International 2021 and Ms. Nepal International 2021 title winners would represent Nepal at its international versions being organized in Singapore.

2022 edition of the Mrs. World pageant would be organized at Las Vegas, USA.

Sabita Lamichhane, Suruchi Pandey, Anupama Rai, Bhawisha Koirala Chataut, and Chanda Thapa Giri are some of with winners of Mrs. Nepal International.

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She became the first Nepali in Europe to be selected as the dress designer for Top-10 finalists of Miss Grand Belgium 2021, the most popular beauty pageant in Belgium.

In the grand finale of the beauty pageant held in Lint city of Belgium, the Top-10 finalists participated in catwalk showcasing the dresses designed by Arati.

“It was a matter of pride not only for our family and community but for the entire country,” said Arati’s spouse Arjun Kafley.

“Arati got an opportunity to demonstrate her skills in such a popular contest in the European country,” he added.

The 2021 edition of Miss Grand Belgium was organized on September 18, 2021.

Beauty queen Zomkey Tenzin has bagged the coveted crown. The 20-year-old model was born in Tibetan refugee camp in India and migrated to Flemish Brabant, Belgium later.

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It was made a reality by fashion designer Bina Ghale. Complete with a jewel-encrusted oxygen mask, the costume is dedicated to the Sherpas and trekkers who scaled the highest mountain. This outfit would be worn by Anshika at 69th edition of Miss Universe pageant being held in Hollywood, Florida, USA.

As detailed in the promotional video, the outfit constitutes a special suit created by Tenzeeng Sherpa. The costume is ornately painted by Gautam Shrestha and Abhijeet Prajapati.

Accentuating their beauty is the jewelry provided by Rajesh Shakya. Contrasting the ornamental decorations are the hiking boots, which mountaineers swear by. The dress is also graced by Tibetan prayer flags which are often found atop Mt. Everest.

Also Read: Miss Nepal Winners List From 1994-2020

The costume, which aims at bringing the Himalayan mountains to the world, will be showcased on 13 May 2021 at the National Costume competition hosted by Miss Universe 2020.

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She bagged the record after the United Insurance Company  (Nepal) Ltd. appointed her as the company’s CEO for the coming four years.

Ms. Poudel, at 34, is also the youngest to hold the highest position in the nation’s insurance sector.

As an MBA graduate from Delhi University, India, Poudel has more than a decade of experience in the insurance sector. Before being appointed as CEO, she was serving as Deputy CEO of the company.

After completing her bachelor’s degree in 2012, Poudel worked in India for various companies, including Vodafone, Bharti Axa General Insurance, and ICICI Lombard General Insurance in Mumbai.

After coming to Nepal in 2018, she worked as the Assistant General Manager of Sanima General Insurance for two and half years and then became the Deputy CEO of United.

The United Insurance Company, in a board meeting last Thursday, decided to appoint Poudel as the company’s CEO after its former CEO Ramesh Kumar Bhattarai’s four-year term ended in November last year.

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First Lady of the United States Jill Biden and Secretary of State Tony Blinken will host a virtual event on March 8.

Now in its 15th year, the IWOC Award recognizes women around the globe who have demonstrated exceptional courage and leadership in advocating for peace, justice, human rights, gender equality, and women’s empowerment, often at great personal risk and sacrifice.

In 2019, at the age of 15, Muskan became the victim of an acid attack for rejecting a boy’s advances.  She suffered severe burns on her face, chest, and hands.  Her recovery was painful and continues to this day.

Despite this, Muskan turned a tragedy into an opportunity to bring about change in Nepal. Facing threats and social pressure, Muskan lobbied for stronger laws and punishments for acid attacks.

She met with Prime Minister K.P. Oli who called for a new law to be drafted for acid attacks, and issued an ordinance punishing perpetrators and regulating the sale of chemicals.

Muskan’s leadership was crucial in bringing about change. The U.S. Embassy in Nepal is proud to support her and promote the advancement of women’s and girls’ rights in Nepal.

Source: NP US Embassy

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The book follows the story of a child widow who goes through numerous hardships in her life.

Tara was born on the day of the 1990 B.S. earthquake – one of the worst earthquakes in the country’s history, which Gandhi claimed as a providential retribution for India’s failure to eradicate untouchability.

The first main event that happens in the book is Tara’s wedding. Getting married at the age of seven was seen as a norm rather than an exception during that time. And so a child unaware of what it means to be married is wedded. So, with this bit of trickery from her parents, Tara unknowingly starts her married life, bringing color red to her life.

Also Read: Nepal’s Sapana Roka Magar in 100 Influential Women for 2020

In our culture, red is not just symbolic for married women but is integral for any form of celebration and worship. Following her marriage, Tara’s life follows the monotonous labor of rural area that relies on sustenance farming.

Two years after her marriage Tara is widowed.

The ideas of purity and impurity are central to our culture with even people and their actions being seen as pure/impure and auspicious/inauspicious.

Mensuration and childbirth are two of the incidents which make women impure and untouchable in our culture, barring them from kitchens, and any religious and cultural places.

On top of this, widowhood makes a woman permanently impure and inauspicious. Not being allowed to be married again in the future, and excluded from almost all festivals and ceremonies, widowhood does literally takes all colors out of their life along with forcing them to clad in white clothes for the rest of their life.

Returning home after widowhood gives Tara a semblance of hope – she can live like a son, her mother says. But tragedy again befalls her in the form of her mother’s death which is followed by her father’s second marriage to a child.

Also Read: Human Trafficking in Nepal

Despite not having any kids of her own, Tara is the primary caretaker for her younger brothers until she does not feel comfortable in her father’s house anymore and at the age of 33 years, leaves for Devghat.

Devghat is a place people go to devote their lives to spiritual pursuits. The concept of Sannyas is an old tradition in our culture, meaning purification of everything in Sanskrit.

To quote Bhagavad Gita, “He is known as a permanent Sannyasin who does not hate, does not desire, is without dualities.” Hence, this action by Tara can be seen as the fulfilment of both the need for purification and the renouncement of desires.

But Tara’s feelings portray anything but this. At the beginning of the journey, all she desires is for her brother to come calling for her, to stop her from going. And throughout the journey, she has other desires, as she continues hoping and fantasizing for an alternative to where she is going.

She fantasizes about marrying a fellow traveller, becoming a wife, and taking a different life path than the one she is travelling towards.

Throughout her young adulthood, we see Tara pondering about her desire for love, sex, and relationships.

Human desire is said to be the fundamental motivation of all human actions and even in our own religious textbook Rig Veda, desire is said to be the first seed of minds. But despite this, personal desire is seen as something that needs to be repressed or sacrificed in our culture, specifically in the period that follows the main protagonist of our book Tara.

Tara suffers through almost all of the social evils that our country’s women of that time had to suffer. It might have been a melodramatic sob story about misery had it not been realistic for a woman to happen during that time.

Along with Tara’s story, the novel follows the lives of two other women whose story arcs seem to be there just to tell us how Tara’s lives would have been in different cases.

Yamuna, Tara’s friend who is still married embodies the life that Tara might have lived had her husband not died and the plot of her fellow child widow, Pabitra, embodies the life that Tara might have made for herself had she not shackled herself to the expectations of the society and given into all her desires and pleasures.

All three women do go through their share of trials and tribulations and end up in the same place in their old age almost if to showcase the inevitable rigidity that the society had provided to these women.

The novel always draws a parallel between the colorless and harsh life of Tara and the colorful fantasies and desires that she has for herself.

Through our modern lens, her desires do not seem outrageous or even unreasonable at any point but it seems impossible for any of them to come true for Tara. While Pabitra may be seen at the surface level as someone who did extract herself from the shackles of patriarchy but would we have felt that way if we had followed her journey as closely as we followed Tara’s?

Contributed by: Achala Sharma

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The report estimated that one in 50 girl births were missing in the 2011 population census of Nepal, implying that they have been aborted. A total of 22,540 girl births were missing in the five years before the 2011 population census.

The researchers found that 11 districts have significantly skewed Sex Ratios at Birth (SRB) in the 2011 population census. Arghakhanchi is the most affected district with the highest SRBs (127), followed by Bhaktapur (SRB=123). One in six female births were missing in Arghakhanchi.

Moreover, the analysis revealed that sex-selective abortion was geographically concentrated around Kathmandu Valley and Lumbini Province, with 53% of missing girls found in only 11 out of 75 districts.

As per the analysis, in the Kathmandu valley, around 115 males are born for every 100 females. However, researchers estimated that without sex selection only 105 males would be born for every 100 females.

The researchers said that the sex selection would persist and increase in Nepal unless a coordinated effort is made. They advised the Nepali Government to introduce policies that are holistic and encompass economic and legal gender equity. The scientists also requested the government to strengthen monitoring mechanisms to prevent technology misuse, without jeopardizing the right to safe, free and legal abortion.

“As fertility falls and urbanization increases, there is more access to prenatal sex identification technology in Nepal,” said Melanie Channon, the study’s lead author from the University of Bath’s Department of Social and Policy Sciences.

“Our study shows some of the impact this has had over recent years, and we expect there will be a ‘trickle-down’ of ability to select the sex of a baby from the wealthiest and most educated as the technology becomes more widely available and more affordable. Put simply and starkly, without concerted effort, there will be an increase in sex-selective abortions in Nepal,” she added.

According to United Nations Population Fund, around 140 million women are believed to be missing globally. Some areas have seen around 25% more male births than female births.

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While every day is a women’s day, this particular day is marked to celebrate the social-economical, cultural, and political achievements of women from all walks of life.

On this auspicious day, women from every corner of the globe come together to raise awareness against gender bias and take action for inequality, while calling out the day-to-day problems they face in society.

It reminds that while a lot has been achieved, the journey is long, and a lot more needs to be done.

IWD 2021 Campaign Theme: #ChooseToChallenge

Every year, Women’s Day is celebrated with a theme. The theme for 2021’s International Women’s Day is “#ChooseToChallenge.”

“A challenged world is an alert world. Individually, we’re all responsible for our own thoughts and actions – all day, every day.

We can all choose to challenge and call out gender bias and inequality. We can all choose to seek out and celebrate women’s achievements. Collectively, we can all help create an inclusive world.

From challenge comes change, so let’s all choose to challenge,” reads the IWD official website.

International Women’s Day: History and Significance

The history of International Women’s Day traces back to 1910, when Clara Zetkin, a 20^th century Marxist from Germany, proposed at a conference that Women’s Day be celebrated in every country on February 28. The conference comprising of around 100 women from 17 countries unanimously approved the suggestion.

Women’s Day was first observed on February 28, 1911. Two years later, in 1913, the Socialist Party of America changed the date to March 8, and it continues to be celebrated as such every year.

NepaliSansar Wishes All the Women A Happy Women’s Day. Remember, You’re Special!

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