Women's eNews (https://womensenews.org/tag/widow/)
The Indian temple town of Vrindavan continues to attract widows facing the traditional ostracism of village life. Many say they prefer to live on less than $1 a day than to go back to the families who cast them out.
(WOMENSENEWS)–If you have a sick pet or livestock animal on your hands, it’s increasingly likely that you’ll be reaching out to a woman for help.
While many scientific fields still seem to belong to the guys, women began dominating veterinary science in the mid-1980s.
Efforts to get rights and resources for single women have been gaining ground in India. Single women’s organizations have formed in eight of the country’s 28 states, and advocates are now looking to build political power at the national level.
Nepali widows and their advocates are pushing back at a government proposal to pay engaged couples for a widow’s remarriage. Not only is the law like a new form of dowry, they say, many widows feel better off staying single and earning their own incomes.
India’s land rights act enacted Jan. 1 was considered a major milestone for tribal and forest – dwelling communities. But women’s activists say it fails to protect the property rights of women, some of whom are forming collectives to hold on to land.
Wiccan war widows have prevailed in a 10-year struggle to have the VA accept their religion’s pentacle as a headstone symbol in U.S. military cemeteries. Fifth in a series on women changing religious institutions and practices.
In the past three years, farmers in a central India region have committed suicide by the thousands following bad harvests. Now, their widows are left to grieve and worry about the arrival of moneylenders and debts they don’t understand.
Films coming out in the U.S. on the problem of widow abuse in India have generated their own sagas. The director of “Water” had her effigy burned in 2000 while “White Rainbow” opened in India last year amid floods and a cholera outbreak.
Widows in India still undergo ritual humiliations and extreme ostracism; conditions that several new programs are seeking to redress.