Getting in, dropping out, and staying on: Determinants of girls' school attendance in the Kathmandu Valley of Nepal

Ethnographic research was conducted in 1997-98 to identify factors that determined schools attendance among Nepali women of the previous generation in the Katmandu Valley. It was found that gender, caste, poverty, cultural prejudice and rural residence prevented a majority from going to school and those who went, were pulled out regardless of academic talent in order to work at home, as wage laborers and domestic servants, or to enter arranged marriages.