A New Look

When the world is celebrating its third 'International Day of the Girl child this year, a new look towards the adolescent girls is important in the context of Nepal where the societies are so diversified. There are some societies where modernity is flapping its wings so fast  and females are considered equal as man and working hand in hand with them where as there are some societies where still the evil system of 'chhaupadi' exists.

Most of the time because of some complex set of reasons, most of what is known about adolescent girls focuses on the problems what our adolescent girls of traditional societies face. At the mean time we forget that many adolescent girls of Nepal are showing remarkable resiliency and stamina during the stressful time of adolescence in the modern society. There are many strong adolescent girls who are not mere victims of male dominance, criminal activity or poverty. The new generation of growing up adolescent girls of Nepal is more literate and more gender-egalitarian than ever before; which obviously doesn't mean that they aren't prone to any kinds of problems rather the lens through which we are looking them should be changed.

There should be change in the topic of discussion that we are holding regarding the challenges of adolescent girls. A new understanding of adolescent girls affirming their strength and resilience needs to be developed in the present day which may be a bit different than the age old motions which were discussing. As the Nepalese society has been changing so rapidly, the modes of risks and challenges of our adolescent girls are also changing. That's why our shift of focus is necessary at this stage.

Adolescence is the period of physical, psychological and social maturing from childhood to adulthood. Generally, the term 'adolescents' refers to individuals aged 10-19 years. Though this period is challenging irrespective to gender, adolescent girls are considered to be more prone towards victimization; and the number of victims is more in the developing countries, where adolescent girls typically have more household responsibilities than boys do, allowing them less time to work outside the home and more or less no time to think about their personal well being.

Adolescent girls live at the interface of inequity, vulnerability, disparity and discrimination at all levels, from family to community to the state, curtailing their development opportunities. Nepal, too a developing country isn't far from this pathetic reality where adolescent girls are considered vulnerable to various problems such as trafficking, sexual exploitation, child labor, HIV and AIDS, early pregnancy, substance abuse, suicide, accidents and violence.

Realizing the problem, there are a large number of initiatives also being promoted by several governmental and non-governmental organizations addressing the concerns. Apart from all these, what generally is being overlooked is the transition that adolescent girls of today's Nepal are going through. Yes, we must work for the inequity our girls are facing in the society and we must rescue them from the vulnerable problems that our uneducated adolescent girls may be victims of but at the same time we also must not forget those modern adolescent girls who may be suffering from new sets of challenges of the modern complex society.

Change is inevitable and our society too can not be away from it and with this our new young girls are also surely bound to adapt the change. Along with this change new dreams and possibilities too arise with in them. Thus, it's important for every part of the society to welcome the dreams our young girls of modern Nepal would see and prepare the environment for them to experience their mobility, freedom and material wealth which may be much more than we as a traditional adult may expect for them and make them aware about the new risks and challenges. With due respect to the dream and desires of our young girls, what we need at the moment is a new look at the adolescent girls.