Nepal, Feb. 3 -- For many young women, the slogan chaurasi ma mahila, hunu parcha pahila (In 2084 BS, women must be ahead) carried hope: That in the years ahead, we would finally have more women in visible leadership that we could look up to, learn from and imagine ourselves becoming. Yet today, even after a political revolution calling for change, the candidacy list for the federal elections in March has pushed those expectations further.

Nepal celebrates women through speeches, quotas and statistics, but Nepali women's real representation is only in population statistics, where they are a majority. But when inclusion remains just symbolic and confined to numbers rather than to actual authority to bring about the change, it raises the q...