Empowering Widows in Development

Margaret Owen, a lawyer who has specialized in issues of women's rights and herself a widow, has begun work on a study of the position of widows and their potential contribution to sustainable development. The results will be available next year in a book published by Zed Press, in collaboration with Planet 21. Here she outlines the often forgotten plight of the widows in many parts of the developing world.

"The night my husband died, his brothers came with a truck to fetch his body for burial in his village. They came into the house and ransacked it to find the money and his life insurance policy. They took away all our household possessions: the television, radio, the pots and pans. Even the blanket and the bed. They left nothing. When I tried to stop them they beat me and the children, and threw us out of the door.

"I was in such grief and shock from my husband's sudden death, that I did not complain for many weeks. When I did no-one would help me. His brothers took all the money, friends and other relatives donated at the funeral, which was meant for the children's food and school fees. Now I have nowhere to live and my children are ill and have no education. They accused me of having poisoned him, using witchcraft. They claimed that I was not his proper wife, for they had stolen my marriage certificate."

- A widow in Kenya.

The girl-child in many less developed countries of the South, may survive various hazards: female feticide, infanticide or neo-natal death from neglect, and she may well face others such as female genital mutilation, dowry death, childbirth and illegal abortion. But she is very likely to spend much of her life as a widow, in harrowing circumstances.

Widowhood is overwhelmingly a woman's problem. In India there are three times as many widows as widowers. In one African country it is estimated that 67 per cent of all adult women are widows.

Child-marriage, polygamy, the wide age-gap between men and women, war and increasingly the scourge of AIDS has greatly increased the numbers of widows, especially young widows. Women outnumber men among elderly populations almost everywhere, and the majority of these are widows less able, as in the past, to call upon children to support them in their final years.

When a woman commits sati in rural India, there is a public outcry all over the world. Yet little interest is shown in the misery endured by millions of Indian widows every day.

In widowhood, a woman joins a category of women among the most marginalized, and invisible. There is little research to inform public opinion or goad governments and the international community to action. Widows hardly figure in the literature on poverty or development.

Certainly in India and in many countries in Africa, and probably elsewhere, irrespective of religion, tribe, income, class, education, or geographical location, millions of widows are deprived of their universally acknowledged human right to shelter, food, clothing, and discriminated against in relation to health, work, dignity, and participation in the community life.

In Africa it is a common occurrence for the dead husband's family to "chase her off" her homestead, grabbing all the household property, even the children. Accident compensation, life insurance policies, pensions can all be seized with impunity. In South Asia, a widow may be secluded within her brother-in-law's household to become a victim of exploitation, a domestic slave.

The traditional obligations of the extended family to protect the widow appear to be weakening, partly under the pressures of poverty. Structural adjustment programmes and foreign debt have drastically affected the poor widow's access to the essential services.

From all over the developing world there is evidence that millions of widows and their children live in conditions of acute insecurity, deprivation, and even violence. Civil laws of inheritance, customarylaws relating to marriage, inheritance, land ownership and child custody, and patriarchal attitudes to women in general, appear to sanction such violation of women's human rights.

The treatment of widows is clearly discrimination as defined in the UN Women's Convention on Discrimination Against Women, (CEDAW), giving governments an obligation to address this issue.

Under the Convention, governments are required to remove all laws that discriminate against women because of their sex. They must also use all means to modify or eliminate traditional practices harmful to women and children.

Discriminatory inheritance and land ownership laws, constraints to remarriage, degrading and often life-harming mourning rites, traditions such as levies on widow-inheritance, and lack of access to credit, training and work are some of the matters requiring immediate attention by governments who have ratified the Convention.

This type of human rights abuse is not only most serious and widespread, but also has the gravest consequences for the children of widows, denied health, welfare, education and therefore ill-equipped to contribute to their country's development.

Indeed, beyond such human rights issues lay many often profound consequences of such discrimination. One of these is of direct relevance to population growth.

Fear of an unsupported widowhood is often so great that women feel a need to have many children to ensure that there are adult sons to look after them in old age. One widowed mother of 12 children explained her reluctance to use family planning methods: "It could get rid of the one good son who would care for you". Family Planning programmes might have greater success if social and economic policies were shaped to improve the widow's status.

The neglect of female children is another relevant issue. Studies in India have shown that the desire to have at least one adult son is much greater among women than among women. In widows families, as much as in all poor families, girl children risk neglect in favour of their brothers. The poor Indian widow weeps when her husband dies not just for herself but for the dowryless daughters who must be married off as soon as possible, often to older men, so that they in turn become young and "inauspicious" widows themselves.

In Africa, education is the first expense to be scrapped when a woman loses the male breadwinner. Education is expensive. Sons take priority over daughters. And there are other cultural reasons why widows tend to keep their daughters at home.

Migration is another consequence of widowhood. Many widows in rural area, unable to cultivate land or manage the cash crop without male assistance - and often in debt after nursing a sick husband - are forced to migrate to the town in search of cash. Migration is full of risks to unaccompanied women and their children. In the Mathari valley shanty town, in Nairobi, daughters of AIDS widows as young as 11 or 12 get involved in sex-work in order to buy food for their sick and dying mothers. Policies need to be formulated that will support widows as farmers in their villages, and guarantee relevant education and a future for their sons and daughters in the locality where they were born. Access to credit and extension services, loans to start small businesses, appropriate technology and other innovative schemes to assist widows and their children to conserve and cultivate need donor support.

The stigma attached to AIDS makes life for the widow and children of an afflicted family particularly hard. The widow's in-laws may blame her for the husband's death. They may try and force her to marry or co-habit with a brother-in-law. She risks transmitting infection or receiving it. She may not be able to remarry. She and her children may suffer abuse. Prostitution is sometimes the only alternative to starvation, in spite of the risks. If already sick, she will be desperately concerned about the future of her children. Schemes developed in Uganda by The Aid Support Organization, (TASO)have helped thousands of Ugandan women to "go public" about HIV, find work and dignity, and help other widows. But discrimination against widows in this context is severe.

Another aspect of widowhood relates to refugees, 80 per cent of whom are women and children. A high proportion of these women are widows, or women who do not know for certain whether their husbands are dead or alive. They may face multiple problems, in addition to the burden of bereavement and exile. Sexual harassment and rape during flight and in the camps are common.

Even in stable societies, the fragmentation of traditional family support systems, coupled with lowered fertility and longer life expectancy often leaves elderly widows in precarious circumstances if there are no relatives to care for them.

Almost everywhere in the developing world, the poor status of widows must be seen in the context of patriarchal institutions -the custodians and interpreters of civil and customary law are male legislators, judges, administrators, police and traditional court assessors. "Living custom" and religion are likewise interpreted and enforced by male village chiefs, or religious leaders.

Governments, with few exceptions, have "reserved" in their reports to CEDAW, the subject of customary family law. Nevertheless, the negative aspects of custom need sensitive analysis.

Responding to a CEDAW questionnaire on violence against women, Ghana was the only country to identify the degrading treatment of widows as an example of unjustified brutality. Without empowerment through economic independence and self-help organizations, changes in the law will have little effect. What then can be done?

Law reform, social support and the empowerment of widows are all urgently needed, as is research and public debate at all levels.

Women's Bureaux in various Southern and East African countries are now proposing changes in Inheritance Law and the Penal Codes to give more protection to widows and daughters. Women and Law in Southern Africa's research project (WLSA), has published a series of constructive research papers analysing widows' rights in the context of African customary law, the Women's Convention and the African Charter on Peoples' Rights. The International Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA), does useful work in many jurisdictions, taking widows' complaints of harassment, robbery and violence to court, and educating women about their rights and the importance of wills.

But widows themselves must be the agents of change. Networking between national widows' associations, establishing branches in every village, slum and refugee camp with channels of communication to the relevant Ministries, would ensure a two-way flow of information and provide a basis for much needed research.

Methods of collecting social and economic statistics must be redesigned, so that better information on the condition of widows' lives is obtained.

The neglect of widows and their families causes great misery, not just for themselves but for society as a whole. It is vital that this subject is introduced on to the agenda of three great world conferences on Population and Development, on Social Development and on Women, which will take place over the next 18 months - and that this forms part of the real-life agenda for change as the millennium is approached. ·

• Helping Widows in India