International Widow's Day

Around the world there are over 258 million widows*, and according to the Loomba Foundation , almost one in ten live in extreme poverty. In parts of the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, around 50% of women are believed to be widows.
 
In parts of the world, widows:

• are blamed for their husband's death
• are perceived as carriers of disease
• have few or no rights to inheritance or land ownership
• are liable for their spouse's debts
• are disowned and made homeless by relatives
• are victims of physical, psychological and sexual abuse
• have to take part in traditional mourning rituals that are harmful, degrading and even life-threatening
• have less access to pensions
• are likely to become destitute and may be forced into manual labour or sex work

 
According to the census, there were just over 2 million widows in England in 2020. In the UK, an estimated 1.5 million widows lost out on pension income after bereavement, with almost 60% seeing a major drop in income. It was only in February 2023 that unmarried cohabiting parents could claim bereavement benefits. Cohabiting partners without children are still not eligible for benefits.
 
The origins of International Women's Day
On 23 June 1954, Raj Loomba's mother, Pushpa Wati, became a widow at the age of 37. That very day, she was ordered to remove her bangles, jewellery and bindi, which gave her the status of a married woman, and wear white for the rest of her life. When Raj Loomba, who was ten at the time of his father's death, got married to Veena Chaudhry, the priest told him that his mother had to sit away from the alter in case she brought bad luck to the couple.

Five years after his mother died, Loomba and his wife set up the Shrimati Pushpa Wati Loomba Trust (now the Lomba Foundation) to support widows and their children. The Foundation created International Widow's Day in 2005, and in 2010 the United Nations declared 23 June to be a United Nations day of action to highlight and combat discrimination and injustice suffered by widows worldwide.
 
What we can do to safeguard and advance widows’ rights
From The UN Women explainer on what you should know about widowhood:

1. Adopt social and economic reforms to improve widows’ access to inheritance, land, pensions, and other social protections. Ensure that fiscal policies, economic relief measures for COVID-19 includes widows.
2. End discriminatory laws and patriarchal systems that have long disadvantaged women. Women cannot inherit equally as men in 36 countries, cannot be heads of households or families in 31 countries, and cannot have a job or pursue a profession in 17 states. Such discriminatory laws, which rob widows of property, shelter, income, social benefits, and opportunity, must be struck down to advance women’s rights worldwide.
3. Empower widows to support themselves and their families and live with dignity by ensuring access to education and training opportunities, decent work and equal pay, and by reversing social stigmas that exclude, discriminate, or lead to harmful and violent practices against widows.
4. Collect gender data—better quality demographic information, broken down by age and gender, to ensure that widows are counted and supported, now and in the future. The United Nations suggests a minimum of five marital status categories when collecting census data, “widowed and not remarried” included.
5. Support international efforts and advocacy to uphold and expand the rights of widows as enshrined in international laws and conventions.
6. On International Widows’ Day, learn and share stories, voices and experiences of widows and support their rights. Follow #WidowsDay on social media.

 
 
*While The Widows Handbook usually uses 'widow' as a non-gendered term, this piece talks about female widows