During last 10 years, from 1999 to 2009, I focused myself in bringing forth the voices of women whose voices were never heard by their family, society or the state. These three institutions had never felt that women also have opinions and they can express them through the medium like radio. The radio programs that I developed play the role of an alternative space to challenge the subordination of women and discrimination against them. While the programs air voices of women who have been discriminated against, they also provide space to voices of those who resist, rebel and refuse patriarchy which turns against their dreams. I talk to women's human rights activists, government officials and policy makers; hear women and their movements resisting violence in their countless forms - exclusion; women struggling for work, wages, their rights to the land; right to mobility, right to choose, right to expression, right to reproductive and sexual health, etc. Every time I talk with them and hear their experience I felt that the deep-rooted patriarchal values, beliefs and attitudes have always treated women in isolation and have never analyzed women's situations in relation to their gender relationships within families, society or the state.
I was at the crossroads of this movement; I met women and had the opportunity to listen to their stories at the end of 2005. They had started to come in groups to challenge the patriarchal structure which forced them to suffer more even after contracting HIV from their own husbands. They never felt that the husbands to whom they had devoted their entire lifves could put them at risk. After listening to these real and painful stories, I then realized that the issue of HIV and AIDS had never been analyzed through the gender lens. Although there were many stories in newspapers, radio and television on the issue of HIV and its impact and efforts to fight AIDS, I could hardly find stories of women living with HIV and the suffering they were facing.
In 2007, at Equal Access, I had the opportunity to work on the cross-border radio program on HIV and AIDS named “Desh Pardesh” (Home and abroad), which was targeted to wives at home and husbands abroad who have migrated to India for work. This program gave me more space to learn the different dimensions of HIV and AIDS which helped me to analyze the gender relations within the family and how these put women at risk of sexual violence and HIV infection.
Later, my involvement in another radio program named “Samajhdari” (mutual understanding) has helped me to discover more about the link between the twin pandemics of Violence against Women (VaW) and HIV. Through this radio program, many stories of women who faced VaW and HIV, cause and consequence of each other, have been brought out and analyzed. Radio programs like "Desh Pardesh" and "Samajhdari" have helped Nepali women to speak out to protect themselves from HIV infection. After listening to these programs, wives can not only talk with their husbands about safe sex and risky behaviors but also can negotiate for the use of condoms and take them to Voluntary Counseling and Testing (VCT) centers for HIV testing.
These experiences have solidified my belief in the power of radio and the changes we can create through creative programming and its impact in the lives of millions of women in Nepal.
If these projects had not been, the people reaching out would be fewer and it would take more time to bring change in behavior – millions of women would continue to be silent and men and women would be unable to advocate for themselves and save themselves from HIV, violence, human rights abuses, health risks. The projects have provided me a method to execute my ideas to address these twin pandemics together by bringing the unheard voices of marginalized populations through radio programming to an international audience. In the future, though, there will be more projects, and my passion and patience to advocate for women’s rights will never end. Wherever I will be, I will continue to contribute in this movement by challenging patriarchal values, attitudes and beliefs that put women at risk.
Jaya Luintel, March 2010
