Agency, autonomy and the shared sexuality: Gender relations in polyandry in Nepal Himalaya

Polyandry is a system of a single woman sharing multiple men as husbands at a time. In fraternal polyandry, all the brothers in one generation share a common wife. In non-fraternal polyandry, a group of like-minded men from different households get married with a single woman. The practice of polyandry has been reported in India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Tibet.  Exceptionally, it has also been reported in the Amazon forest of northwest Brazil.  The existing literature on polyandry categorically highlights mainly three sets of explanation that account - collectively or individually - for the emergence/persistence of ployandry.