NEW DELHI: Lived experiences of 3,076 widowed women captured in a new study shows that underage marriage is a contributory factor to early and impoverished widowhood. Nearly 66% of the women surveyed were below 18 – years – old when they got married and a significantly high number of them were illiterate.
The report ‘Abandoned Widows: Visible yet Invisible, Voiced yet Voiceless’ underscores the need to apply the legal age of marriage of 18 years more stringently as the empowerment of women is very closely linked to access to education.As many as 1,501 widows who were married before the age of 18 were illiterate. On the other hand, of those who married after the age of 18, only 470 were illiterate, 200 could at least read and write, 265 had gone to school till class 10, 75 studied till class 12 and 28 widows were even graduates.
The report also highlights that “encouragingly social stigmatisation of widows as inauspicious is not as prevalent as it was a few decades back. But there is an unsaid psychological pressure on widows to conform to a certain unwritten code of widowhood out of social conditioning in terms of clothes or social presence.”
Data shows that despite the fact that around 3% of the women said they were forced to adhere to rituals of widowhood like a dress code, 87% women said they wore either white or light or black coloured clothes. “Only a mere 5.2% felt that a dress code did not apply to them and that they could wear any colour,” it is stated in the report.
The study conducted by voluntary organisation ‘Guild For Service’ was supported by the National Human Rights Commission. It was carried out in a urban and a rural district in each of the five states – Mathura and Hathras (Uttar Pradesh), Jaipur and Sawai Madhopur (Rajasthan), Puri and Bhubaneswar (Odisha), Durg and Rajnandgaon (Chhattsigarh) and Madurai and Dindigul (Tamil Nadu). The data collection was done between September 2022 to January 2023 and the report brings together an analysis of both primary and secondary data along with detailed case studies.
As per the 2011 census, there are 5.6 crore widowed persons in India. Women outnumber men accounting for nearly 78% of the total widowed population. With the decennial Census yet to be conducted, the report highlights that it has resulted in a gap in the data that specifically displays the demography of widows in India. “In this backdrop, this survey focuses on the generation of inclusive data where issues related to widowhood will be studied on the pan-Indian level,” principal investigator of the study and President of ‘Guild For Service’ Meera Khanna said.
Of the 3,076 women surveyed in this report, nearly 50% were between 41-60 years; 36% between 61-80 and 11% between the ages of 18-40. Over 60% of the widows were not working due to a lack of feasible jobs, lack of education, skills among other factors. The research highlights that this needs to be addressed if “we need to build social capital and eradicate poverty”. Interestingly, 95% of those interviewed had a bank account; the ration card was in the name of the widow in the majority of the cases and 69% of widows said they received some kind of pension.
The report ‘Abandoned Widows: Visible yet Invisible, Voiced yet Voiceless’ underscores the need to apply the legal age of marriage of 18 years more stringently as the empowerment of women is very closely linked to access to education.As many as 1,501 widows who were married before the age of 18 were illiterate. On the other hand, of those who married after the age of 18, only 470 were illiterate, 200 could at least read and write, 265 had gone to school till class 10, 75 studied till class 12 and 28 widows were even graduates.
The report also highlights that “encouragingly social stigmatisation of widows as inauspicious is not as prevalent as it was a few decades back. But there is an unsaid psychological pressure on widows to conform to a certain unwritten code of widowhood out of social conditioning in terms of clothes or social presence.”
Data shows that despite the fact that around 3% of the women said they were forced to adhere to rituals of widowhood like a dress code, 87% women said they wore either white or light or black coloured clothes. “Only a mere 5.2% felt that a dress code did not apply to them and that they could wear any colour,” it is stated in the report.
The study conducted by voluntary organisation ‘Guild For Service’ was supported by the National Human Rights Commission. It was carried out in a urban and a rural district in each of the five states – Mathura and Hathras (Uttar Pradesh), Jaipur and Sawai Madhopur (Rajasthan), Puri and Bhubaneswar (Odisha), Durg and Rajnandgaon (Chhattsigarh) and Madurai and Dindigul (Tamil Nadu). The data collection was done between September 2022 to January 2023 and the report brings together an analysis of both primary and secondary data along with detailed case studies.
As per the 2011 census, there are 5.6 crore widowed persons in India. Women outnumber men accounting for nearly 78% of the total widowed population. With the decennial Census yet to be conducted, the report highlights that it has resulted in a gap in the data that specifically displays the demography of widows in India. “In this backdrop, this survey focuses on the generation of inclusive data where issues related to widowhood will be studied on the pan-Indian level,” principal investigator of the study and President of ‘Guild For Service’ Meera Khanna said.
Of the 3,076 women surveyed in this report, nearly 50% were between 41-60 years; 36% between 61-80 and 11% between the ages of 18-40. Over 60% of the widows were not working due to a lack of feasible jobs, lack of education, skills among other factors. The research highlights that this needs to be addressed if “we need to build social capital and eradicate poverty”. Interestingly, 95% of those interviewed had a bank account; the ration card was in the name of the widow in the majority of the cases and 69% of widows said they received some kind of pension.
