Kathmandu, June 30 -- Bhumika Shrestha's last three months have, by any measure, been historic. Shrestha has fought for the rights of sexual and gender minorities for the past two decades. Now she is carrying that fight into the legislature as Nepal's first transgender Member of Parliament. Shrestha has made an impact almost immediately. As a member of the parliamentary Law, Justice and Human Rights Committee, she helped push through one of the most crucial symbolic changes-the renaming of the Ministry of Women, Children and Senior Citizens as the Ministry of Women, Children, Gender and Sexual Minorities and Social Security.

"I didn't know the name itself would change," she says. "I was also surprised."

That gap between what she pushed ...