Nepal, Aug. 20 -- I recently attended two international conferences on Nepal studies held in Kathmandu. I have attended similar events before, where I often participate in various capacities on panels on gender. It is common to find a good number of upper-caste women scholars presenting at these panels, with an increasing number of Janajati and a lower proportion of Dalit, Madhesi or Muslim scholars. The latter often provide a much-needed counternarrative to what Seira Tamang has called the hegemonic idea of a Nepali woman that white and upper-caste development practitioners and researchers have fashioned after the image of an upper-caste Hindu woman.

Following on from their white counterparts, it is usual to encounter this dominant idea...