Widows have no social status...To be a widow in Kenya is to automatically fall into poverty or become a victim of gender violence
Recently, I supported Mama Rosebella, a 69-year-old widow whose house burnt down in Mur Malanga, a village near Siaya town. The peasant farmer reached out to friends and relatives for help with little support coming through.
There is a homestead on her husband’s land that she wishes she could live in peacefully, but as a widow, she has no title deed to it. To help her, I tapped into my social networks who sent support to build her a new house.
In my work as a champion of widows – and a widow myself – for over a decade with Rona Foundation, I often receive tragic news of cases like this from widows of diverse backgrounds, education and social status. They speak of facing discrimination, disinheritance and oppressive social norms.
So are the well-known unspoken inequalities and social injustices against women and girls found in many contexts and realities of Kenya’s 47 counties. They are why we speak out and raise awareness locally and globally during the 16 Days of Activism against gender-based violence – an international campaign that commences on November 25.
The violence and discrimination widows face must be included in the campaign. I’ve even heard of widows reporting people blaming them for their husbands’ deaths and calling them bad omens who bring bad luck to the late husband’s family and the larger community. Some are subjected to degrading and life-threatening funeral and burial practices. Some are evicted from their homes and banned from inheriting property despite international and domestic laws.
This violence extends to the language used to refer to widows. In Kenya, the Gusii tribe lynch and kill elderly widows on claims of witchcraft. My tribe, the Luo, say Chi Liel (wife of the grave) oblivious of the impact this association with death and the dead has on the widow’s mental health, economic and social life.
Kenya is ranked 33rd, in the list of countries where widows lead devastated lifestyles in the World Widows Report by the Loomba Foundation, an organisation that defends the rights of widows. Kenya has an estimated 8 million widows, comprising nearly 15 per cent of the population.
“Widows have no social status,” says Eunice Ndolo, MCA South Sakwa in Siaya county, a new widow, who faced many insults and odds to get elected.
Such a statement from a widow leader reveals that widowhood too often represents ‘social death’. In some communities, life after the death of a husband is characterised by sexual cleansing, aggravated land and property grabbing with no county or national government intervention.
Even for the corporate woman who transitions to widowhood, it increases redundancy substantially, especially given the limited time off work to bury and grieve spouses. Even more worrying, Covid-19 has made the emotional support needed to grieve scarce, and the death of a spouse even lonelier.
“To be a widow in Kenya is to automatically fall into poverty or become a victim of gender violence,” added Eunice when I spoke to her during her homecoming party last week.
Sadly, when it comes to what widows need, in many cases their representatives do not even know what they do not know, for data are scanty. In Kenya, a 2017 report by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics fails to mention widows at all, and it was not until 2019 that data on the country’s widows was captured for the first time, in a yet-to-be-released National Census Report.
This is not okay. We need to see a change, now. The government should create systems and structures of governance that truly 'leave no one behind'.
There are promising precedents, recently Siaya county broke the ‘jinx’ by electing three widows, out of four female MCAs. That pattern should be seen in appointive positions, legislation and budgeting at the national level.
Specifically, to better serve widows, the government needs to establish a widow’s commission that can galvanise widows' voices and undertake transformative and impactful interventions. It can start by setting up a technical working committee within State Department for Gender that will be tasked with birthing the commission.
This action will position Kenya, a UN member state, as a leading example of change in implementing the just adopted United Nations’ Widowhood Resolution – a global commitment that has addressed the plight of widows directly.
I want to see a Kenya where support and inclusion are extended to all widows, a place where women like Mama Rosebella are treated with dignity and respect beyond the 16 Days of Activism.
Founder and Director of the Rona Foundation, a grassroots organisation in Kenya that works to advance and protect widows' rights, as well as provide support to orphans and vulnerable children. She is a 2021 Aspen New Voices Fellow. @RoselineOrwa.