Rippling: How Social Entrepreneurs Spread Innovation Throughout the World

Chapter 4

Lifting the Veil for Women Who Don't Exist—Nepal

After Lily Thapa became a widow she saw how the reprehensible treatment that culture and society foisted upon widows made them virtually disappear. She determined to reverse the age-old taboos and practices and give widows back their human rights.

My husband was a doctor and he died in the Gulf War. That period after he died was a very unhappy one for me. I was so up and down, not knowing what I'm going to do, and I wasn't even normal at that time.

—Lily Thapa

OVERNIGHT, LILY THAPA BECAME WHAT ALMOST ALL MARRIED women fear most in Nepal—she became a widow. Even though Lily came from an upper-class family and was herself an educated and accomplished woman who ran a primary school in Kathmandu, ...