Nepal is a developing country and like in most of the developing countries women are lagging behind in every sector from socio-economic, political to education. Though there are many organizations working for women empowerment the situation of women has not improved as it is supposed to be. In Nepal, there still prevails the trend of celebrating when a son is born and mourning when a daughter is born. Though there are certain incremental changes seen in urban areas, rural areas are still far behind in treating women as equal to men.
In context of urban areas, women are progressing but the freedom is limited to the choice of dress and shoes, a woman cannot decide on major issues of her life like what career to choose, where to work, when to marry, when to give birth to her child and in what number. The modernization in Kathmandu has limited women to being just an object of entertainment .The ever flourishing billboards in Kathmandu valley popularly known as hoarding boards is an example of how women are being treated as sex objects. From an advertisement of lady’s cream to men’s wear and accessories a lady model is used wearing revealing clothes.
In order to free Kathmandu from this modernization and so called freedom of women, Lasanaa, an alternative art space, along with women down the pub, an art group from Denmark has come up with the innovative idea to aware people on treating women as human beings rather than objects. This is a project which discusses on gender and democracy issues through public art. This project aims to aware general public through the use of billboards which is not for the commercial purpose but to make people understand about the matters that are crucial to the society and to its development.
The main objective of this project is to showcase most creative expressions about gender and democracy and to put forward the thoughts and expressions of the general people in billboard. Hence they are seeking for creative, multidisciplinary (art/text) expressions on the topic of ‘gender and democracy’ for this billboard. (For further information log on to: www.differentvoices.com)
Precisely, women are not made from men’s feet to be trampled upon by him nor out of his head to top him but out of his side to be equal with him and to be treated as equal to him.
