Typically, in a male-dominated country like Nepal, women have no say in many household affairs. They suffer so much silently. One of the worst practices in Western Nepal is known as a chhaupadi system for Hindu women which prohibits a woman from participating in normal family activities during menstruation because they are considered impure. The women are kept out of the house and have to live in a shed. This lasts ten to eleven days when an adolescent girl has her first period and four to seven for every following one. Childbirth also results in a ten to eleven-day confinement.

Some superstitious people think that a new mother or a menstruating woman will bring bad luck on the whole household if she stays in the main house, or even believing that she can make cow’s milk into blood. One of the leading newspapers, The Diplomat (Jan 18, 2018) had this alarming news published :

In the first week of January this year, a Nepali woman who was sleeping in a hut during her menstrual cycle was found dead by her neighbors. According to the preliminary investigation, police suspected that Gauri Bayak, 23, a permanent resident of Turmakhad Rural Municipality-3 in Accham district, died due to suffocation, thanks to the narrow and congested hut where she was sleeping. She was the latest victim of the Chhaupadi custom, which is prevalent in several far-western districts of Nepal. In the last ten years in Accham district alone, nine women have lost their life while living in the huts during their menstrual cycle,” Menuka Dhunaga, a local journalist, said in a report published in Nepal’s vernacular daily, Kantipur. “Despite the announcement of destroying such huts to end such practices, women continue to die and practices go unchecked,” she reported.