For many women around the world, the loss of a partner is magnified by devastating long-term fight for basic rights and dignity in a society where harmful widowhood practices are a norm and most widows are stripped of basic financial rights. YEJIDE GBENGA-OGUNDARE explores how the international commemoration of the International Widows’ Day every June 23 has helped to reduce the socioeconomic and psychological burdens on widows or whether there has been any progress in the fight to stop violation of widows’ rights.
According to statistics, the world has about 258 million widows and one in 10 widows live in extreme poverty because in many communities especially on the African continent, widows are often denied inheritance rights; their properties are grabbed after the death of a partner and they usually face extreme stigma, discrimination and violation under the guise of traditional practices in paying last respect to the dead or proving that the woman did not kill her husband.
Widows are coerced into participating in harmful, degrading and even life-threatening traditional practices as part of burial and mourning rites; widows are forced to drink the water that their husbands’ corpses have been washed in as well as shaving of the hair and scarification.
According to the United Nations, at least 1.36 million of the approximately 258 million widows globally are child widows, but the true number is likely higher due to under-reporting. It is said that globally, women are much less likely to have access to old age pensions than men, and as a result, the death of a spouse can lead to destitution for older women.
Indeed, the lives of many women starts coming to an end with the death of their spouse as they suddenly face a 360 degrees negative turnaround amidst great economic burden, rights violation and psychological weight of losing a loved one especially when children are involved.
A 2015 study published in the Journal of Development Studies used data from the World Health Organisation’s Survey of Global Ageing and Adult Health to examine deprivation among widows. The study found that widows were deprived in several areas in the countries they studied. However, levels and patterns of deprivation varied significantly. The authors said the findings challenged “generalised claims about widowhood” and called for “more contextualised analysis.”
Widows in many countries lack legal rights. According to the World Bank’s report ‘Women, business and the law 2023’, 76 of 190 countries studied restrict a woman’s property rights. Currently, 43 economies do not grant equal inheritance rights to male and female surviving spouses.
In 2018, the Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) Helpdesk, an agency funded by the then Department for International Development, produced a review of the evidence available on harmful cultural practices affecting widows. It identified a number of such practices, such as widows being forced to marry surviving members of their spouse’s family, being raped and being accused of witchcraft. However, the VAWG Helpdesk noted that, while there was small-scale qualitative research available on these practices, there was limited data on their prevalence.
This is why the United Nations declared the International Day of Widows officially on December 21, 2010 by passing a resolution called “In Support of Widows and Their Children”. The history of International Widows Day has its roots from the Loomba Foundation located in the United Kingdom which is a charitable trust founded by Lord Raj Loomba which works on an international level for empowerment of widows.
The day was set aside to make governments across the world to take steps to empower widows to achieve economic independence in the face of continuing discrimination and prejudice affecting their opportunities and life chances as well as those of their dependents.
The Loomba Foundation initiated the International Widows’ Day in 2005 though the plight of widows worldwide has been the foundation’s focus since it was established in 1997 and the observance falls on June 23 because Loomba’s mother became a widow on that date in 1954.
The day is important as it brings about awareness among the public the problems that widows face all over the world and it is a time to reflect on the progress that has been made, and to celebrate acts of courage and determination by ordinary women while drawing attention of the people to take action and provide full rights and recognition for widows.
It also strives to break the traditional stigma that widows are outcastes, rejects the idea that widows bring misfortune and creates the awareness against the stigma that widows are a waste of society or are a burden on national wealth.
But while a lot of awareness has been made, there is little difference in impact because many widows still suffer a lot when their spouses die; in addition to losing their lover and usually breadwinner, they lose homes, properties and even finances as the man’s family takes away everything and even lock them out of homes during the grieving period.
These grievous acts of violation of widow’s rights is enabled by culture and defies education as many perpetrators are highly educated and exposed but still engage in such harmful practices against widows. Widows remain victims of physical and mental violence relating to inheritance disputes and are coerced into participating in harmful traditional practices as part of burial and mourning rites even when it is detrimental to their health.
And as the world marks another International Widow’s Day, it is another opportunity for action towards achieving full rights and recognition for widows by providing them with information on access to a fair share of their inheritance, land and productive resources; pensions and social protection that are not based on marital status alone; decent work and equal pay; and education and training opportunities.
It is also another opportunity to further call on governments to take action to uphold their commitments to ensure the rights of widows as enshrined in international law, including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women and the Convention on the Rights of the Child as it has been proved that in cases when national laws exist to protect the rights of widows, weaknesses in the judicial systems of many states compromise how widows’ rights are defended in practice and should be addressed.