Meeting and Training the Inspiring Women Lawyers of Nepal

Photo above: Annette Beashel assists women lawyers during the training in Nepal

In December 2017, New Perimeter sent out a team of eight lawyers to Kathmandu, to provide a week of training to Nepali female lawyers. This was the third time that this training was delivered, and again New Perimeter partnered with Canadian NGO Women Lawyers Joining Hands and the Nepal Bar Association as part of an initiative to provide mentorship and continuing legal education to female Nepali Lawyers. 

I was beyond excited when I found out I had been selected as one of the trainers. I had been wanting to be a part of this project for a long time. The reason that this project is so important is that only 55% of women in Nepal receive any type of schooling and only 22.9% of university graduates are women, so the fact that a women is able to complete the study required to become a lawyer in Nepal is a huge achievement in itself. But for various reasons women in Nepal are not given the same opportunities for overseas study and professional development that their male counterparts are. Therefore once qualified, women continue to not have the same advancement opportunities. This program aims to fill that gap.

Empowering others through education is something that is very close to my heart and part of my own family's story of how we were able to change our fortunes. It was so rewarding to be able to help these women on their own journey to building their career and improving their circumstances.

The program included a course on legal ethics and professional responsibility, and corporate and commercial law for a new group of 30 women lawyers. Advanced training was also provided to the women who participated in the previous training session in March 2017, on the topic of intellectual property rights, alternative dispute resolution, and international arbitration.

I was so impressed by how motivated and enthusiastic the women were; it was amazing. On the first day, they asked me if we could make the tea breaks shorter because they wanted to learn more!

During the week there were many opportunities to provide mentoring and guidance in addition to the formal training. During one of the tea breaks when these informal discussions were encouraged, one of the participants asked me a question which has really stuck with me, and hit home as to the value of us being there. The woman lawyer asked "When you decided to study law, how did you convince your parents to let you do it and that it would be valuable to become a lawyer?" I was initially surprised, as for me, it was a given that I would go to university, and my parents were over the moon and so proud of me when I decided to study law. I learned that many of the women that we worked with faced not only professional barriers but also personal challenges in their efforts to study law.

I am hopeful that the women’s participation in this training not only helped build their own professional skills and networks, but also demonstrated to their families and the profession the importance of cultivating women in the legal profession. I believe that this project and training is not just important to the individual women, but also in starting to create broader opportunities for female lawyers in Nepal.

I truly believe that the training we delivered inspired the female lawyers to push forward and pursue new opportunities with their newly acquired knowledge, but I am not so sure that they realise the impact they had on us, the trainers, and how inspired we were by them by the end of the week of training.

I look forward to keeping in touch with the participants and seeing how far they go, I have no doubt that they will go on to do amazing things in Nepal.