The men in the village after the women had run through the field and touched all the plows and water buffalo.

Now let’s go back in time to Laljahri’s village the day after her role play. The men were stirred up and still discussing it. They wanted to know what I felt. They asked how women were treated in my country. I told them as honestly as I could. I said that women’s rights were protected by the Equal Rights amendment to the US Constitution just as they are in Nepal in the 1990 revisions to the Constitution. I said I felt good the women’s movement had firmly established women’s rights in the US and that the whole country took a giant leap forward as the women’s movement pushed against the status quo. I said that it was far from perfect, though, that women, in many areas, were still not treated as equals across the board and that there would probably by more legislation, more law suits and more conflict before my daughters and their daughters would see complete and final parity between the genders.

I asked the men what they felt seeing how women were treated in Nepal and if they saw anything wrong with the status of women. I asked how they felt about the young Nepali women, their daughters essentially, being sold and used to provide prostitutes for Indian brothels. It was rare if a man I asked these questions would commit himself. They usually shrugged their shoulders saying, in kind, “not much I can do about it..” The man might suggest with a nod of his head that it’s bad but, at the same time, telling me they were not going to commit themselves to any force or action that would abolished it per se.

As a white man from far, far away I was on thin ice. I was not in a position to give advice particularly since women in America are still are not equals with men and there are myriad examples of this. Women are becoming more equal every day but women are still treated like objects, as sex objects, and as part of a multi-billion dollar pornography industry. These practices will probably be around as long as there are two sexes. I told the Nepali men these things and suggested that meneverywhere had to get involved and support women and women’s equality, that everyone had to work togetheron this. I said I felt it was essential for men to support women and some of the Nepali men, just a few, agreed with me. They may have been being polite, however, Laljahri’s role play had an impact, it had got them thinking