It has been globally accepted that women are integral part of the society and we
should leave no stone unturned to empower them. In spite of this global consensus, in
many parts of the world, women are marginalized and treated unequally. Nepal, one of
the poorest countries by Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita, is not an exception
and faces multitude of challenges with regard to women. Decade long civil war left
many women widowed and made them even more vulnerable. The aim of this thesis is
to assess the level of participation in decision making of those war widows from
Nepal. The study is based on the primary data collected in from four districts in Nepal
from November 2011 to February 2012.
Participation in decision making is used as a dependent variable and four socioeconomic
measures are used as independent variables. Binary regression model was
used to calculate the odds ratios in the final model. The results showed that human
poverty measures affect the most in decision making among war widows in Nepal.
Specifically, social restriction was found to be the main factor that is limiting
participation in decision making. Lack of education and early age marriage were also
found to diminish participation in decision making.