In 1988, 400 newspapers and magazines were published in Nepal - and not one specialised in news items relevant to women, minorities and the oppressed. Two women journalists - Susan Maskey and Anji Chetri - decided to address this vacuum, and set up Asmita Publication House to publish Nepal's first women's issues magazine - Asmita (meaning "identity".)
In 1988, 2,000 copies of the first issue of Asmita were published. Today, it has a circulation of more than 10,000 readers. The two pioneers now work with 16 members of staff and Asmita is distrbuted to almost all districts of Nepal - however remote. (Given the country's harsh geographical conditions, this is no mean feat.)
The magazine is sold for seven rupees less than its cost.
After eight years, the publishing house started addressing the needs of rural women who lack reading materials in easily-accessed language. In keeping with the group's mission to support Nepal's literacy campaign for women, Asmita began publishing a two-monthly magazine for neo-literate and semi-literate women. Sahachari - meaning "friend" - is distributed free of charge to grassroots women.
Asmita has also developed a resource centre archiving educational materials on women's studies and conducts training course for journalists and media workshops.
The London-based Women in Publishing presented Asmita with their Pandora Award in 1994.
In the context of Nepal and its neighboring countries, violence against women (VAW) trafficking in women and girls, force prostitution, dowry-related abuse, rape, and child marriage. This is compounded by the more general forms of violence native to all the world's regions: battery, murder, and sexual harassment.
Feminists in Nepal put a substantial portion of the blame on the media, pointing out that the country's media trivialise and sensationalise rape, name rape victims and fail to produce analytical, investigative coverage on VAW.
WACC recently sponsored a two-day seminar in Nepal - "Media Advocacy in Relation to Women and Violence" - organised by Asmita Women's Publication House and ANWIC, the Asian Network of Women in Communication, of which Asmita is a member. The seminar, held on May 21st and 22nd, evaluated the efforts of women's as well as human rights organisations to conduct media advocacy toward ending VAW. The role and potential of the media were discussed and concrete solutions were sought.
The media perpetuate the stereotypes, neglecting women's issues and exploiting women's sexuality, said keynote speaker Jyotsna Chatterji, from the WACC-supported ANWIC. Alcohol, for example, is the single largest factor behind the violence against women, but even government-owned media publish or broadcast aggressively a range of alcohol commercials using women as objects.
Another problem identified was that women's groups in Nepal are unable to transcend political differences and therefore fail to work together toward the same end. This diminishes their efficiency, said participants at the seminar.
Bhutan is perhaps even worse affected by the media's failure to support women. The concept of human rights in general is ill-developed in the country and by extension, the concept of media advocacy is an alien one in the country. The only women's NGO in Bhutan, is headed by a government official and tends not to focus on bad news, according to reports at the seminar. Only since 1980 has rape been considered a punishable crime in Bhutan. There are about one hundred thousand Bhutan refugees in eastern Nepal. UN and government social programmes for these refugees have general objectives which are not gender specific, so VAW as such is not a separate area of concern.
The fifty seminar participants representing advocacy groups and NGOs which had previously worked independently agreed to cooperate closely to lobby the media and governments and conduct training.
