Kathmandu, July 11 -- When the Rastriya Swatantra Party's organisers walked on stage at an internal orientation, Anushka Shrestha counted them without meaning to. Roughly seventy men. Two women. "That made me feel woke," she says now, sitting in the party that has brought nearly 51 percent of women into its Central Committee. Even with the best intentions in the room, she says, allies would say things like, "Let's not think of gender now. Let's just bring the best up." "That's exactly what equity isn't," she says. "Equity is about pulling things up so that they are equitable."

Women's formal participation in Nepali politics dates to 1951, but for decades, it carried no binding requirement. A 1990 quota mandating just 5 percent of each pa...