Breaking the Silence: The Journey of Rabina Devi Mahara

“When I got married,” she says, “I was told a daughter-in-law shouldn’t leave the house without permission. I had to hide indoors if someone other than my immediate family came to visit.”

Despite these restrictions, Rabina sought every chance to learn new skills. So when the Samagra Mahila Bikas group invited her to a Gender Transformative Social Norms (GTSN) session under the FCDO Nepal-funded Security and Justice Programme (SJP), she accepted quickly. She had previously joined the group’s sewing classes, which made her family more comfortable letting her attend.

For the first time, she found a space where women openly discussed violence, discrimination, and rights. But attending these sessions also meant stepping outside her social boundaries. Men in the community questioned her movements, and soon their concerns reached her husband. He was angry at first, but Rabina calmly explained that the sessions were about learning, understanding discrimination, and building a better future for their children. She reminded him that many other women were attending despite family resistance. After some discussion, he began to support her.

At the GTSN sessions, Rabina encountered ideas that challenged everything she had been taught. She realised that many rules for women were created by society, not by nature.

“They talked about how men and women are equal,” she says. “It made me question everything.”

She began teaching these lessons at home. “I tell my children that boys and girls are equal,” she says. A session activity comparing boys playing cricket while girls made tea helped her reflect: Why should girls always be the ones serving? Don’t they also want to play? This helped her understand the deep-rooted gender norms that start as a child, which she wanted to uproot.

Alongside gender equality, Rabina also learned about caste discrimination. Having faced it all her life, she finally understood that she had the right to question it. This led to one of the most defining moments of her journey.

One day, while washing clothes at a nearby pond, a man muttered in disgust, assuming she was Dalit (lower caste).

Rabina turned to him and asked, “Is my blood different from yours? Do you bleed red while I bleed black?”

Shocked, he asked whose wife she was, expecting her family to silence her. Instead, her father-in-law defended her, saying she had spoken the truth. For Rabina, this was a turning point. Seeing her in-laws, who once held strong ideas about gender and caste, stand by her showed how awareness could shift even long-held beliefs.

Since then, Rabina has faced other incidents of discrimination, but now she knows she has rights and laws that protect her. This knowledge has given her the confidence to live with her head held high.

Today, Rabina is not just informed, but she is a leader in her community. In an area with a large Dom population, caste-based exclusion remains common. Women come to her when they experience discrimination or domestic violence. She often intervenes in cases where men return home drunk and abuse their wives, speaking to families about respect, equality, and the unacceptability of violence.

Through the GTSN sessions, Rabina found her voice, and she is determined to use it.

Her journey from being confined indoors to becoming a community advocate shows what is possible when women are given the space to learn and speak.

The Security and Justice Programme (SJP), funded by the FCDO Nepal, works in Madhesh Province to prevent gender-based violence (GBV) in partnership with Divya Development Resource Centre (DDRC) and Hami DajjuVai (HDV).