A 20-year-old sits in a room full of adults. The conversation turns to women whose husbands have migrated to the Gulf for work. The verdict is swift: these women have it easy now. Money is no longer a problem. They have cash in their hands, no one to answer to, and if they ask for a divorce, everyone knows why: they stand to collect a fortune in alimony.
Is there a contradiction in the room? Perhaps. But a heavy silence settles over it, quietly endorsing the assumption. The young woman might want to speak, but she realises she does not have the voice to break through the barriers in the room.
Such assumptions slip easily into everyday conversations, hardening into a familiar stereotype: a woman whose husband works abroad is free to do as she pleases.
But how much truth does this hold? Does a husband’s absence change who holds power in the household? What happens to a woman’s authority, autonomy and responsibilities when he leaves?
The answers are more complicated than the stereotype suggests.
A country built around migration
The scale of labour migration in Nepal makes these questions impossible to dismiss. According to the figures cited in research on migration, approximately 14.5 per cent of Nepal’s population comprises international migrants, with men accounting for a substantially larger share than women. Remittances sustain millions of households, making migration not an exception but an integral part of everyday life.
The overwhelming majority of Nepalis who migrate for work are men. Consequently, the question of what happens to the women left behind is not a marginal one. It is a question about the lives of women in communities across the country.
Research conducted in districts such as Khotang and Udayapur offers a more nuanced picture than the competing narratives that portray migrant wives as either liberated or burdened. To understand what changes, it helps to distinguish between three things: decision-making authority, personal autonomy and the division of labour.
She makes the decisions, but does she hold the power?
Decision-making is often treated as the clearest measure of power. When a husband leaves for work abroad, his wife may gain greater control over the everyday running of the household.
Research in Khotang, where agriculture remains an important source of livelihood, shows how this can happen. A woman may decide which crops to plant, when to hire agricultural labour, whether to take up paid work or whether to open a small shop to supplement remittance income. Instead of seeking permission, she may make these decisions herself and inform her husband afterwards.
Yet this authority has limits. Major decisions, such as buying land, building a house or choosing a school for the children, often remain subject to the husband’s approval, even when he is thousands of kilometres away.
The distinction matters. A woman may be responsible for putting decisions into practice without having the final say over what gets decided. She manages the household, but the authority to determine its larger direction may remain with her husband.
Physical absence, then, does not necessarily mean a transfer of power. Sometimes, it merely changes how that power is exercised.
Freedom by necessity
Autonomy is different from decision-making authority. It is not simply the ability to make choices within a household, but the freedom to move through the world without constantly seeking permission or anticipating disapproval.
Research on migrant households in Khotang suggests that women whose husbands work abroad often gain greater freedom of movement. They may visit markets, health posts and community meetings that their husbands previously attended. Some become more involved in land transactions, visiting potential plots, assessing them and, in certain cases, registering property in their own names.
These changes can be significant. They allow women to develop confidence, acquire practical experience and take on responsibilities that might previously have been denied to them.
But the circumstances in which this autonomy emerges are equally important. Much of this freedom comes from necessity. With the husband away, someone must manage the household, deal with institutions and keep the family functioning.
This is not to suggest that such changes have no liberating effect. They can expand a woman’s sense of what she is capable of doing. But the opportunity to act independently does not necessarily mean that the social structures restricting her have disappeared.
She may gain freedom because the household needs her to act, rather than because society has recognised her right to do so.
The work does not leave with the husband
If migration changes who makes decisions and how freely a woman moves, it does not necessarily reduce the work she must do. In many cases, it increases it.
Domestic labour remains central to women’s expected role in Nepal. Cooking, cleaning, caring for children and managing the household are still widely treated as women’s responsibilities. When a husband leaves, these tasks do not disappear. Nor does the work on the farm.
A woman who previously shared agricultural labour with her husband may now have to take on more of it herself. Yet deeply ingrained gender divisions can prevent her from assuming every task. Ploughing, for instance, may continue to be regarded as men’s work, requiring her to seek male assistance even when no man in the household is available.
The result is an uneven arrangement. Women take on additional responsibilities while the gendered boundaries around what they are expected or permitted to do remain in place.
A woman in Khotang might wake up to cook and clean, spend the day working on the farm, and return home to prepare meals and care for her children. Her husband’s absence has changed the household’s composition, but not the expectations placed on her.
In some ways, she must do more while still navigating the same restrictions.
The rules survive even when men leave
Consider the difference between a woman whose husband works abroad and a woman whose husband has died. Both may live without a husband physically present, but society does not treat them equally.
A migrant worker’s wife can generally continue to wear red, dance at weddings and participate in rituals associated with married women. A widow, by contrast, may face restrictions on clothing, public celebration and remarriage, depending on her family and community.
The comparison reveals how social status is shaped not simply by a man’s physical presence but by the status of the marriage itself. The migrant worker’s wife remains a married woman, and the privileges attached to that identity largely remain intact. The widow may be subjected to a different set of rules precisely because she no longer occupies that position.
In both cases, however, women’s behaviour remains subject to social scrutiny. Their choices are judged against expectations about how a respectable woman should dress, move and conduct herself.
And the people enforcing these expectations are not always men.
Mothers-in-law, aunts, neighbours and other women may reproduce the same rules they have inherited. Some do so out of conviction; others may see conformity as a way to protect their standing within the community. Religious beliefs and the fear of social disapproval can reinforce these expectations.
This is not necessarily a contradiction. It is one way patriarchal systems endure: their rules become embedded in everyday relationships and are passed from one generation of women to the next.
Women may find ways to negotiate these structures, secure limited freedoms and exercise influence within them. But navigating a system is not the same as dismantling it.
So, who holds the power?
Does labour migration liberate women, or does it bind them more tightly to their responsibilities?
Neither answer, on its own, captures the full picture.
A woman’s authority over everyday decisions may increase while her influence over major household choices remains limited. Her freedom of movement may expand, but often because circumstances demand it. Her workload may grow even as her responsibilities increase. And the social expectations governing her behaviour may remain largely unchanged.
Migration can give women meaningful control over aspects of their lives that were previously managed by their husbands. That control should not be dismissed. But neither should it be mistaken for a complete transfer of power.
The household may now depend on her decisions, her labour and her judgement. Yet the deeper arrangement, in which men are seen as providers and women as those responsible for maintaining the home, can remain intact.
She runs the house. He may still have the final say, even from another continent.
That is neither complete liberation nor simply the old arrangement unchanged. It is a shift in power that is real but incomplete, shaped as much by necessity as by choice.
And it deserves to be understood on its own terms, rather than defined by a room full of adults who assume they already know what a woman left behind is entitled to feel.
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