‘It’s All About Education’: Middle-class, High-caste Women’s Aspirations of Choice, Freedom and Modernity in Urban Nepal

Abstract

Discourses of development are highly influential in Nepal, entwining with sets of social relations and local history to form a nationally shared vision known as bikas (development). This article explores how specific sets of (universalist and local) discourses of development and gender articulate in the subjectivities of young, middle-class, high-caste women in Kathmandu as they negotiate transitions to adulthood. Drawing on ethnographic research, the article highlights how education has afforded young women new possibilities and prompted new aspirations compared to earlier generations, and words such as ‘choice’ and ‘freedom’ figure prominently in their discussions of aspirations. However, generational differences in understanding how these dreams fit in women’s lives are often expressed in intergenerational tension around marriage. The article highlights how different discourses fuse in ways relational to people’s social locations, including along junctures of class, caste, gender and generation, arguing for attention to intersectionality in understanding the circulation of discourses of development and modernity in Nepal.