Year: 2015 | Month: December | Volume 6 | Issue 3
Widowhood in Rural Setting: Problem’s and Prospective
Abstract:
Worldwide widow’s population figure estimated at 245 million with half of them living in extremely poverty. (Loomba Foundation Report,2010). India is a country with second highest population of 42.4 million. If on the one hand, a woman is at the peak of ladder of success in many spheres of public life, on the other hand, she suffers a silent social death everyday bound by the customs and traditions in the orthodox Indian Society. They are culturally, socially, economically and politically excluded from the mainstream of the society. The process of urbanisation, modernisation and globalisation have led to changes in economic structure, erosion of societal values and the weakening of social institutions particularly the norms of the joint family. This has made worst the position of the widows in a family and once she becomes a ‘burden’ of the family, no time is lost to eject her from the family environment. This research is focused on socio-economic problems faced by widows in rural areas of Himachal Pradesh. Fifty widows of different age groups were selected with the help of random sampling method. Interview schedule and observation method were also used. It is revealed that widows’ discrimination does not prevail across the nation. That is, this research did not deny the existence of traditional widows’ discrimination in some areas, but demonstrated that this phenomenon does not represent the whole nation, if we focus on the urban areas.
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