Thirteen years ago, Manandhar lost her husband during the Maoist conflict, and now her house—her only source of income—in the April 25 earthquake.  

“I think it’s my destiny to part with people and things that are dear to me,” she said, who was working with locals to clear the wreckage that had once been her house in Bhaktapur.

The latest blow has left the 36-year-old mother of two with no means of supporting her family.

Manandhar, a native from Bhaktapur, had tied the knot with a policeman Birendra Giri from Birgunj at the tender age of 18. Life was good with a bubbly daughter and a loving husband.

Their happiness, however, came to a brutal end in 2002 when Giri was murdered in their own room right in front of her and their three-year-old daughter.

“Fearing for his life, my husband had quit his job six months earlier but was still killed. My daughter witnessed her father being shot in the head and pieces of his skull scattered around. She is yet to recover from the shock,” said Manandhar, as tears welled up in her eyes.

Manandhar, who was pregnant with her second child at the time suffered a heart stroke and has been under medication since.

It took her nine years to fight the social and legal system and inherit her share of property and buy a house. “An illiterate woman could not have done it on my own. Single Women Group helped me fight the legal battle both with the state and my in-laws to give me my share of the property,” she explained.

As her husband had left his job without being eligible for pension, she received just Rs100,000 from the state. This combined with what little her in-laws had given her, Manandhar bought a house in Bhaktapur five years ago.

Life was slowly becoming easier after she started managing her expenses with the rent money. But the earthquake jolted her life upside down once again when her four-storied house built on less than two aana of land turned to rubble right in front of her eyes.

“The house was my only property. I have no idea how to pick up the bits and pieces of my life,” said Manandhar.

According to national census 2011, there are 498,606 single women in the country.

The Post Disaster Needs Assessment has put the number of damaged houses at 498,852, 26 percent of which were headed by a female.  

“Access to relief materials and services were impossible for single women as they did not have male members in the family,” said Lily Thapa, chairperson of Women For Human Right, a single women group. “Single women living separately are usually in lower substandard housing and with lower income.”

The Inter-party Women Alliance, a cross party alliance of women leaders, has found out that women had very little access to relief provided to earthquake survivors. As per the research carried out by the alliance in 15 quake-affected districts, single women faced the most hardship while getting access to the relief .

But the government is to yet identify the need of this particular group.