There’s plenty of research about poverty and discrimination against women and girls – but in most of this research widows, as in society itself, are largely invisible.
The Loomba Foundation began addressing it in the latter part of that decade and it is only now, at the beginning of 2016, that we have a comprehensive global, country by country picture of this issue.
The first thing this report lays bare is that discrimination against widows is not confined to India, or to South Asia, or even to developing countries. It is a deep-rooted feature of gender discrimination all over the world, though its form and impacts differ.
The report provides hard statistical backup to the heartrending stories of individuals. There are over 258m widows, their 585m children and when you add their dependents the number swells over a billion people who are directly affected as a result of widowhood.
Around the world, 1 in 10 women of marital age are widows – but in Afghanistan it’s 1 in 5, followed closely by Ukraine
More than half of all widows are in East and South Asia – more than 1 in 3 in India and China.
Major causes of widowhood include:
Poverty, causing death due to Hazardous work suicide, alcohol, depression and Poor healthcare or nutrition. 1 in 7 widows all over the world lives in extreme poverty (that means on less than a dollar a day), where basic needs go unmet.
Conflict, There’s a high incidence of war widows in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, Afghanistan, but also in the Balkans. In war, widows are seen as easy prey for rape, unprotected and vulnerable.
Disease and famine contributes to widowhood. Then there is the Stigma that attaches to widowhood in a wide variety of ways. One area is religion and superstition, where women are routinely blamed for the husband’s death.
Children of widows suffer the most: Lack of education – in many countries widows cannot afford to pay for education and need the children to help bring in income to sustain the family. Therefore, Child labour, Sex trafficking and child prostitution, Child marriage and Child widows complete the circle, where uneducated young girls are wholly dependent on an old husband and become destitute when he dies.
The report has highlighted issues of widowhood, which are : Property theft and denial of inheritance; Superstition and cruel beliefs; Gender discrimination; Denial of right to family (children removed from mother); Child labour; Remarriage – impossible to remarry or forced remarriage; Widowhood rituals; Child marriage; Poverty and neglect; Lack of social welfare provision; Public health; Girls deprivation.
Sustainable Development Goals
When you consider the evidence in this report, you can see that the hope of achieving some of the Sustainable Development Goals is fanciful unless these issues are addressed.
The SDG declaration says that by 2030 “All forms of discrimination and violence against women and girls will be eliminated, including through the engagement of men and boys.”
