Unpacking Widow Headship and Agency in Post-Conflict Nepal

Ramnarain, Smita, pre-publication version, Feminist Economics, 22.1 (2016): 80-105. 1

UNPACKING WIDOW HEADSHIP AND AGENCY IN POST-CONFLICT NEPAL SMITA RAMNARAIN1

Abstract: Feminist scholars have highlighted a rise in “non-traditional” household structures, as exemplified by female- and widow-headed households, as a consequence of war. This paper points to the necessity of disaggregating female headship to trace the contours of household vulnerability of widow-headed households, a subset of female-headed households. The inadequacy of surveys in explaining the interplay between economic vulnerability and social norms is ameliorated through the use of ethnographic data and the narratives of widow heads collected through fieldwork in 2008-09 and 2011. The paper traces key coping strategies of widow-headed households in Nepal to provide insight into the processes by which widow heads mediate social institutions and patriarchal norms in their everyday struggles for survival, and the spaces of agency that emerge herein. The paper concludes with implications for prevailing understandings of household headship and agency that development practitioners must be attentive to in devising policies to support widow heads. Keywords: agency, female headship, gender norms, violent conflict.

INTRODUCTION

Literature on violent conflict and gender has explored the various ways in which women face the

consequences of war (Caroline Moser and Fiona Clark 2001; Elizabeth Rehn and Ellen Johnson

Sirleaf 2002). The gender lens is typically focused on the political, legal and humanitarian aspects of

women in conflict; the material implications of violent conflict for civilian women's daily lives have

garnered less attention. Even as scholars have commented on the rise of female- and widow-headed

households in the aftermath of war (Tilman Brück and Kati Schindler 2009; Kanchana Ruwanpura

and Jane Humphries 2004; Elizabeth Rehn and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf 2002; UN 2001), few economic

studies focus exclusively on widow headship, on gender norms impinging upon the entitlements and

vulnerabilities of widow heads, or on their agency (or lack thereof).

This paper examines widow headship in Nepal in the immediate aftermath of the decade-long Maoist

civil war (1996-2006). Using ethnographic data (in-depth interviews and participant observation)

collected through fieldwork in 2008-09 and 2011, it provides insight into coping strategies of widow-

headed households (WHHs), and the cultural institutions and patriarchal norms they mediate in their

everyday struggles for survival. I find that widows’ coping strategies have ranged from sales of assets to

taking up market work to recruiting children to help with household work; more crucially, the findings

point to ways in which widow heads mediate gender norms and the complex terrain of kin networks,

to carve out spaces of agency or access to resources. At the same time, the narratives reveal that

agency and the manner of its exercise may depend upon social norms and context, i.e. ‘structures of

constraint’ (Naila Kabeer 2001: 47): specifically, the type of household and proximity to kin, the 1 Current email: [email protected] Current affiliation: Department of Economics, University of Rhode Island.


resources in question, how widows perceive the importance of particular social relations, and the

ability to appropriate socially prevalent gender tropes – being a ‘good mother’, having sons, or having

been a ‘faithful wife’ – to their advantage.

This investigation is significant in three ways. First, looking into the vulnerabilities, entitlements, and

adaptive strategies of WHHs becomes especially important in light of claims that it is largely women

who take on the responsibility of caring for families and communities in the event of the absence or

death of adult men after complex emergencies (Judy El-Bushra and Cecile Mukarubuga 1995; Ruth

Jacobson 1999). The ability of such households to survive, adapt, and cope has immediate term

welfare implications for women and families, as well as for longer-term post-conflict recovery.

Widowhood is also a window into examining how cultural and social norms produce economic

outcomes for women in the aftermath of crises, and how violent conflict impacts the socio-economic

status quo of (this group of) women. A closer examination of the unique coping strategies of WHHs

and the ways in which they are or are not able to exercise agency in the aftermath of war provides

valuable information from the perspective of both development policy and economic theory of the

household.

Second, work in feminist economics has pointed to the limitations of household surveys when looking

into gender relations within the household, especially the issue of household headship. While some

scholars have argued that ‘headship’ itself is a politically non-neutral, Western patriarchal construct

exported into assumptions regarding the household and into data collection methods through

colonialism (Nancy Folbre 1991) or emerging from ‘the acceptance of the Anglo household of the UK

and the US as the norm’ (Janet Momsen 2002: 149), others have drawn attention to female headship

as a means to illuminate women’s contributions to household survival and functioning (Kanchana

Ruwanpura and Jane Humphries 2004: 175). Methodologically, data on female headship, especially in

developing countries, is hard to come by. Even when data exists, its quality is such that it does not

easily lend itself to detailed economic analysis (Nadia Youssef and Carol Hetler 1983). Censuses and

surveys frequently do not employ uniform definitions of “family”, “household" or “headship” leading

to inconsistent and biased reporting of household headship. Cultural and ideological factors also make

the reporting of headship inaccurate: in many countries there is an automatic cultural preference for

the oldest male/oldest son/husband to be designated as the household head regardless of their actual

economic contributions to household maintenance (Sylvia Chant 1997: 8; Nadia Youssef and Carol

Hetler 1983: 225). As a result, feminist economists have argued that mainstream economic methods

that only rely on quantitative data from surveys and censuses are inadequate (Martha MacDonald

1995; Jennifer Olmsted 1997), and that the economist’s toolkit must be expanded in order to fully

understand women’s experiences and gender relations (Michelle Pujol 1997; Günseli Berik 1997).

Therefore, this paper uses qualitative data from in-depth interviews of 32 widow heads of households


in Nepal collected via snowball sampling in two research outings in 2008-09 and 2011. In addition,

eight focus groups and key-informant interviews of 48 NGO and government officials provide

contextual grounding for the findings. The paper does not seek to represent all WHHs in Nepal;

however, commonalities and differences in the experience of the widow heads surveyed herein provide

insight into the post-conflict period from the perspective of this group.

Third, this study presents widow heads’ perspectives on everyday life in a context of transition from

violent civil conflict. These perspectives provide an entry point into conversations about war,

widowhood, gender norms, agency, and access to resources. Feminist standpoint theories have long

emphasized the necessity of using the lived experiences of the marginalized – feminist subjectivities –

as ‘scientific’ resources in order to provide a nuanced picture of social reality (Sandra Harding 1989:

29; see also Nancy Hartsock 1983). Diana Strassmann (1997), Naila Kabeer and Ayesha Khan (2014)

and Fauzia Erfan Ahmed (2014) in Feminist Economics have called for the importance of integrating

women’s voices, experiences and understandings into the construction of theories of the household. In

this study, widow heads’ perspectives are central to answering the question: what does survival and

agency mean for widow-headed households in a context of post-conflict transition and economic

uncertainty? This paper argues that spaces for agency emerge in widow heads’ mediation of everyday

struggles, but as these narratives reveal, this agency is often negotiated and discontinuous.

MAOIST CONFLICT AND GENDER RELATIONS IN NEPAL

Nepal’s Maoist conflict emerged from grievances regarding entrenched inequities within the social

structure in Nepal, rife with caste/ethnic/gender-based discrimination, widespread poverty and

deprivation, and political oppression coupled with bureaucratic corruption (Arjun Karki et al. 2004).

After a decade-long bloody civil war (1996-2006) peace accords were finally signed in 2006 between

the Maoists and the government of Nepal, ensuring Nepal’s transition from a monarchy to a multi-

party democracy. The total death toll was estimated to be around 17, 265 (Nepal Monitor 2011), with

a large number also reported as ‘disappeared.’i

The Maoist conflict attracted a large number of women (around 30 percent of the Maoist fighting

forces comprised of women), especially from rural areas, who joined in protest against the largely

patriarchal rubric of Nepali society and traditional gender positions ascribed to them. Historically, the

legal system (based on Hindu patriarchal norms) has discriminated against women in Nepal, with

restrictions on women's mobility, their ability to inherit property, and their access to productive

resources (Lynn Bennett 1983). The literacy rate for women in Nepal is only 57.4 percent in

comparison to the male literacy rate of 75.1 percent (CBS 2012). Although Nepal ratified the

Convention on Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) in 1991, it ranks low in terms


of gender equality, with a Gender Inequality Index (GII) rating of 0.479 (145th out of 187 countries)

and a Gender Development Index of 0.514 for women (ranked 102 out of 187 countries) (Human

Development Report 2014).

Within this context of overall gender inequality, widows, in particular, occupy a marginal position in

Nepali society, with restrictions on wearing colorful clothing and jewelry, public participation in

festivals and other auspicious occasions (Kathey-Lee Galvin 2006), on mobility, on ability to take up

employment, and on access to land and inheritance. These restrictions are most severe for upper caste

– Bahun and Chhetri – Hindu widows (Kathey-Lee Galvin 2006, Lynn Bennett 1983, Katherine

Rankin 2003).ii However, the generalized loss of social status that all widows face upon the loss of a

husband makes them vulnerable to economic and social abuse.

In the post-conflict period, even as the country remains in political limboiii with respect to a new

Constitution, some legal reform has been carried out. Most notably, property inheritance laws were

changed: where they had previously been excluded, married daughters are now included in the line of

succession, unmarried daughters have obtained the right to inherit ancestral property irrespective of

age (earlier stipulations state that they be above the age of 35), and widows now have full rights to

inheritance irrespective of age (where previously they could only take a share of their husband’s

property after the age of 30). This legal reform has conferred some protections upon women; however,

the deep-rooted social stigmatization of widowhood means that several laws are ineffective or

implemented inadequately.

UNPACKING FEMALE HEADSHIP IN NEPAL: DE FACTO AND DE JURE FHHS

Literature on the gender dimensions of war has commented on the increase in the proportion of FHHs

in the aftermath, either due to the death of male members or (temporary or permanent) abandonment

by them as jobs are lost and as men migrate out of disaster areas (see, for instance, UN 2001).

Zuckerman and Greenberg (2004) point to the case of Eritrea, where abandoned female ex-

combatants who could not return home, many of them single mothers, settled in cities. Kanchana

Ruwanpura (2006) discusses the situation of Sinhala and Tamil FHHs and lone mothers during the

civil conflict in Sri Lanka. Not only might the proportion of female-headed or woman-maintained

households increase during war or disaster, existing FHHs might be particularly vulnerable to the

consequences of complex emergencies because of their poverty and lack of access to resources

predating the crisis (Santi Rozario 1997).

Estimates from the NLSS 2002/3 dataset, collected during Nepal’s Maoist conflict, reveal that FHHs

constitute at least 20 percent of all households in Nepal. The following table compares female-headed


and male-headed households (MHHs) in Nepal. As the table reveals, the average size of FHHs tends to

be smaller than households that are male-headed. In terms of education, female heads are distinctly

disadvantaged to male heads and have fewer years of education on average. However, contrary to the

literature that relates female headship to higher poverty (see Mayra Buvinic and Geeta Rao Gupta

1997), we see here that the percentage of FHHs that may be called poor is much lower than the

percentage of MHHs who may be categorized as poor. One reason for FHHs appearing to be

relatively better off in the Nepalese context, at least in terms of wealth and assets, is remittance income.

Close to half of all FHHs receive remittance income, as compared to less than a third of male-headed

households.

TABLE 1: Comparison of MHHs and FHHs. Source: NLSS 2003.

Average Household Size

Years of Education

Age %poor %receiving remittances

%without land

MHHs 5.49 4.56 45.99 24.2* 27.1 27.9 FHHs 3.78 1.79 43.38 18.3* 46.42 24.5

*Percentage of the number of households in that headship category

At the face of it, therefore, the Nepal case calls to question assumptions of FHHs being worse off than

MHHs. However, feminist scholars have argued that there are wide variations in the determinants and

characteristics of female-headed or female-maintained households. It is thus imperative to disaggregate

female headship further, an issue feminist scholars have frequently contended with in the scholarship

on headship. A conventional distinction drawn in this context is between de facto and de jure FHHs

(Nadia Youssef and Carol Hetler 1983). De jure headship occurs when women have taken on the role of

household heads on account of the desertion of, or divorce or legal separation from, or the death of,

their male partners (i.e. widow heads). De facto headship arises when women are effectively heads of

household due to the prolonged absence of the husband or father, taking everyday decisions and

responsibility for the running of the household. It may also arise when a woman is the primary

contributor to household maintenance, in spite of an adult male’s presence or marginal economic

contribution (Mayra Buvinic and Geeta Rao Gupta 1997). In the case of Nepal, spouses of the

‘disappeared’ are thus notably sans category; however, this phenomenon is beyond the scope of the

current discussion, except to note that FHHs may be underestimated in survey data as a result.

The following table presents summary statistics from NLSS 2003 on de facto and de jure female-headed

households in Nepal. Here, de facto headship in the data is attributed to women who are report

themselves as married but also as female heads. In the case of Nepal, out-migration of men is likely the

primary cause of de facto headship.iv


TABLE 2: Comparison of de facto and de jure FHHs in Nepal. Source: NLSS 2003.

% of de facto FHHs

% of de jure FHHs

Total (n)

% 55.57

44.43

100 (754)

FHHs receiving remittance 53.46 37.54 46.42

FHHs categorized as poor 14.8 22.7 18.3

Landless FHHs 17.89 32.83 24.53

If we use existing survey data to describe de facto and de jure female heads in the case of Nepal, we see

that de facto female heads are likelier than de jure heads to receive remittances, as Table 2 reveals. v

Further, it is a greater proportion of de jure FHHs that are poor and landless. The data points to

considerable heterogeneity in the situation of FHHs in Nepal: as Mayra Buvinic and Geeta Rao Gupta

(1997: 266) argue, depending on the generosity and regularity of remittances, FHHs receiving these

may even be better off than MHHs. More crucially, this data is illustrative of the lack of access to

resources that de jure heads – widow heads among these – tend to face. A higher proportion of de jure

female heads are landless and poor, and fewer receive remittances, in comparison to de facto FHHs.

WIDOW HEADSHIP IN NEPAL

Despite anecdotal evidence regarding increased incidence of widowhood during the Maoist conflict,

there is little data on widow headship in Nepal. According to Women for Human Rights (WHR), a

Nepali non-governmental organization working with widowsvi around 40% of widows in Nepal are

aged 20 or below, and the majority of these are conflict widows; 67% are below the age of 35. Of

these, WHR estimates that 29% are illiterate and only 2% have attained higher education. About 10%

are internally displaced due to the conflict. Note, however, that not all of these widows headed their

households. Field research in Nepal sought to ameliorate this lack of secondary data regarding the

situation of widow heads.


FIGURE 1: Nepal, Map of Districts. Source: NPC, GIS Facility, 2004

I carried out field research in Nepal in 2008-09 and 2011. The research outing in 2008-09 focused on

widow heads in Kathmandu city, and in two mid-western districts Rolpa and Dang, where the fighting

had been most severe during the conflict. Initial interviewees (4) were contacted through the

organization Women for Human Rights (WHR). Subsequent interviewees (21) were identified through

snowball sampling in the absence of detailed censuses or studies on widow heads. A total of 25 widow

heads participated in this round. In 2011, I carried out a further 7 in-depth interviews of widow heads

of household (three from the eastern districts of Morang and Sunsari and four from the west-central

districts of Dhading, Tanahu, and Chitwan), bringing total participants to 32. In addition, 8 focus

group discussions were carried out with groups of widow heads, widow non-heads, and non-widows in

order to provide some comparison between groups.

Widow heads interviewed came from a variety of class backgrounds (average income was NRs 6200vii);

with regard to caste/ethnic affiliations, they were Bahun/Chhetri (or the so-called high castes) (17),

Magar (7), or Tharu (8) (n = 32), the latter two being janjatis (indigenous groups) from the mid-western

mountainous and the lower plains (Terai) respectively, areas most affected by the conflict.viii Widow

heads outside Kathmandu were more difficult to approach (due to security concerns as well as

practical considerations such as distance and terrain) and were contacted through local contacts (field

workers in various organizations) in these districts. Table 3 presents some summary statistics on the

interviewees.


TABLE 3: Descriptive Characteristics of Widows in Sample

Characteristic Number of Households

Caste

Bahun 7

Chhetri 10

Tharu 8

Magar 7

Location Rural 18

Urban 14

Household Arrangement Nuclear 22

Proximal 10

Displacement Forcibly displaced 7

Not displaced 25* * Includes households that migrated to Kathmandu from districts voluntarily

Source: Fieldwork data, 2008 and 2011. In her comprehensive study of widows in Nepal, Kathey-Lee Galvin (2006) groups living arrangements

of widows in Nepal into four categories: widow-headed nuclear arrangements, proximal nuclear

households, extended family arrangements, and other alternative residences. Nuclear widow-headed

households are established, entirely separate living units. Proximal nuclear households occur when

formal separation of the husband from his natal family has been accomplished, but their living

quarters, including a separate kitchen, are located ‘adjacently,’ close by, or within the same

compoundix. Proximal agricultural households may receive a share of the harvest, and are expected to

contribute what they can to the patriline. Extended family arrangements, in which a male patriarch

presides over multiple generations under the same roof, are common in South Asia. In this family

arrangement, women have a lower status than the male head of household and male heirs, earned

through producing the male heirs. Finally, alternative residences for widows in Galvin’s classification

include old people's homes, homes for the destitute etc.

Galvin’s categorization provides a useful schematic to categorize living arrangements in Nepal. For

this study, widows in extended households and in alternative residences were excluded since they are

not typically household heads. I focused only on widows living in widow-headed nuclear or proximal

arrangements (see Table 3), with nuclear and proximal residences having been established before the

husband’s passing. When widow heads lived in spatial proximity to their marital or natal homes,

several questions ascertained headship (based on income/earnings, everyday decision-making,

ownership of the home and property, etc.) before the interview proceeded. This in-depth verification

through conversation and follow-up questions avoided the cursory attribution of headship that surveys


are wont to do and complicate the notion of headship, as we will see. Widow heads in Kathmandu

were more likely to be in ‘publicly acknowledged and accomplished’ (Kathey-Lee Galvin 2006: 83)

nuclear households since most of them moved to Kathmandu accompanying their employed husbands

or as displaced households after their husbands were killed. Household arrangements in the districts

(mostly rural) were typically proximal, but the widows interviewed were nevertheless the primary

providers of livelihood and survival for their families despite various levels of dependence on kin

networks.

The age of the widow heads interviewed ranged from 20 to 58 years (average age 42), Galvin's (2006)

study, which interviews non-working widows (not all heads) in their late 60s, 70s, 80s and even 90s. In

cases where the husband's death is attributable to natural causes, it is possible that older widows are

more likely to be heads of households than younger ones (Kanchana Ruwanpura 2006). However, in

cases where women's husbands have been killed due to conflict, there may be no direct correlation

between headship and age. Age can matter, however, in the amount of economic or social resources a

widow head is able to command for her household's survival and livelihood. All of the interviewed

women were of working age and capability and had children. Twenty women had children below the

age of 16, while the rest had at least one child aged 16 or above, usually in higher education, some

type of paid employment, and/or in agriculture. The average educational level for the respondents,

excluding the respondent who had a college degree, was 6th grade (the highest level reported otherwise

was 10th grade). While half the WHHs in rural areas were primarily agricultural and derived much of

their livelihoods from farming, animal rearing and allied activities, the others and households in

Kathmandu depended on petty commodity trading or the informal or service sectors.

The objective of the in-depth interviews with widow heads was to collect information on their post-

conflict circumstances: in addition to collecting some demographic information such as age, period of

widowhood, and caste affiliation, the interviews were semi-structured and focused on collecting life

histories of widow heads pertaining to specific life events, economic situation, household composition,

children, kin relationships, education, household assets, debts, remittances, employment, insecurity,

displacement or migration, participation in post-conflict rehabilitation programs (such as

microfinance, capacity building, or skills development), access to health services, and public

perceptions of widowhood. For reasons of safety, no questions were asked regarding the causes or

circumstances of death of the husband; this information was sometimes volunteered, sometimes not.

Interviews each lasted for several hours, depending upon the participant's availability. In Kathmandu

city it was possible to revisit or, in some cases, telephone, WHHs for follow-up and/or clarification, but

due to difficulties with repeat access in rural areas, such follow-ups were not always possible. More

time was spent on each of the rural interviews because I was aware that follow-up might not be

possible. While I was able to speak some Nepali (and Hindi on rare occasions) and understand


responses, a research assistant who also served as translator clarified responses. Interviews were

translated in consultation with the research assistant to elucidate meaning, body language, and

context.

COPING AND SURVIVAL OF WIDOW-HEADED HOUSEHOLDS IN POST-CONFLICT

NEPAL

In a context of large-scale destruction and ongoing or recent violence, households and communities

face scarcity, loss of assets, dearth of means of livelihood, and increased poverty. A wide range of

survival and livelihood strategies, i.e. coping economies, are employed towards household survival.

The term coping economy refers to population groups that are using their diminished asset base to

maintain minimum or below-minimum living standards (Michael Pugh, Neil Cooper and Jonathan

Goodhand 2004: 9). Coping economies reveal individual and household strategizing for subsistence in

the aftermath of crisis. At the same time, aspects of survival and agency emerge in tracing these coping

strategies through interviews with widow heads, organized below into salient themes.

‘Either work, or starve’: livelihoods, employment, and vulnerability

Table 4 presents a breakdown of widow heads’ economic activities and employment. As can be seen

here, 23 widow heads (72%) had taken up employment or economic activities after becoming widows.

These women took up employment in a vast variety of sectors: informal sector jobs performed by

widow heads included petty trade, transport, construction labor, and working in other people’s homes.

Formal sector jobs included working as sales assistants in stores in urban areas, producing handicrafts

in cottage-type industries, carrying out office work for microcredit organizations or NGOs, and

providing health services as field worker. One respondent, the only one who had a college degree,

worked as a school teacher. While the WHHs in Dang and Rolpa were primarily agricultural and

derived much of their livelihoods from farming, animal rearing and allied activities, the households in

Kathmandu typically depended on petty commodity trading, participated in the informal or service

sector, or were self-employed.

TABLE 4: Labor force participation of widow heads before and after widowhood

Economic Activity No. of widow

heads Employed/economically active before and after widowhood 7 Employed/economically active before widowhood but not after 1 Employed/economically active after widowhood

• Agriculture and allied 2 • Informal sector (petty trade, transport, construction etc.) 9 • Formal sector (manufacturing and sales, health, social services, education,

credit, handicrafts) 12

Unemployed/not economically active before and after 1 Source: Fieldwork data, 2008 and 2011.


Taking up employment outside the household was a significant step for many widow heads. Several

women stated in different ways that the pressures of livelihood and survival had forced them into

working outside the home (where they previously had not) and/or in tasks considered unsuitable for

women, especially widows. Widow heads faced significant constraints in taking up paid employment

and stepping outside the household to work. Fulfilling child-care responsibilities – in addition to

working outside the home – was a primary refrain of struggle for widow heads of nuclear households.

A further handicap to working in paid employment outside the home was a lack of education, training,

or skills development. Several women had significant anxiety about taking up jobs outside their homes

for the first time in their adult lives and stepping into the public sphere. This anxiety was compounded

by concerns of what may or may not be considered appropriate behavior for widows. Sunita Boharax

is a 32-year-old ‘high-caste’ widow head in a nuclear household and started working after her

husband, a soldier, was killed in 2003. Sunita was educated upto the matric level and was able to find a

job as a store assistant in a pharmacy in Kathmandu. She recounts her experience of entering the

labor market thus:

When I first started working, some neighbors and relatives were very inquisitive and judgmental…. They would say, her husband is dead and now she does what she wants to do. She lives alone with her children; she goes and comes as she pleases. Where does she go?

At the same time, the argument of necessity, survival, and providing for her two children, aged 6 and

10, also enabled her to continue working. In the case of Sunita and some other widows based in

Kathmandu, being in an urban center contributed to the ability to take action:

It was a difficult decision …but (my relatives) knew that I had to work to support myself and send my children to a good school. So they did not complain too much. Being in Kathmandu was a good thing in that way.

- Sunita Bohara, Chhetri widow head, Kathmandu, 2008.

In the rural context, women (especially janjati women) had already been participating in agricultural or

animal rearing activities before becoming household heads. However, a majority stated that while they

spent more time outside the home now – working on their own as well as on other people's lands – and

felt that the intensity of work and stress levels had increased due to taking up more work and facing

greater economic uncertainly. An older Magar widow head in Rolpa (age 42) stated:

From early on, I used to do everything. I always helped with farming, raising animals, and when my husband was away I did all the work myself. …But it is different now …when my husband was alive, there was someone to lend a hand …now I am by myself.

- Krishnakala Gharti, Magar widow head, Rolpa, 2008.

Gautam et al. (2001) have remarked that women in Nepal challenged gender norms significantly in the

aftermath, taking on traditionally masculine agricultural tasks such as ploughing. While two widow

heads stated that they had ploughed their farms after losing their husbands, the primary form of

agricultural work they took on was as subcontracted labor on others’ farms, with animal rearing,


handicrafts, and household production providing supplementary means of livelihood.

In the case of rural high-caste women, becoming a widow head changed their financial circumstances

adversely, but they were still in a better position economically than their janjati counterparts. However,

rural high-caste widow heads and widow heads in proximal household arrangements faced greater

constraints in decision-making regarding livelihoods or lifestyle options and access to family property,

due to greater dependence on kin networks and greater everyday surveillance of their behavior by kin.

Kabita Poudel, a Bahun (Brahmin) widow, started managing her husband’s agricultural supplies shop,

but had to give up control on her husband’s share of farmland since ‘there was no one to manage it,

and asking for it would have spoiled relations’ (see also Fauzia Erfan Ahmed 2014, and Katherine

Rankin 2003 who report similar anxieties around women’s property ownership in Bangladesh and

Nepal respectively). These relations of dependence were most apparent in the case of proximal widow

heads (not always upper-caste) who received varying amounts of support from kin, typically a small

share of agricultural produce. However, widow heads reported that this amount was insufficient for

their needs, and they did need to work outside the home. They also reported facing more criticism for

staying out of the home while working and greater stress in negotiating kin relations upon becoming

widows. Om Kumari Dangi, a 28-year-old Tharu widow head in Dang lived in a proximal

arrangement with her in-laws (her in-laws live in the same compound although she had shared

separate living quarters with her husband). Besides working as agricultural labor, she also took on jobs

consisting of manual labor in the nearby town during the off-season. She stated:

My in-laws don't like that I … go (to work) by myself, but our circumstances have changed so much. … It is either work, or starve.

- Om Kumari Dangi, Tharu widow head, Dang, 2008.

Widow heads are also extremely aware of their vulnerable position and their lack of bargaining power

in the labor market. Jhami Roka, age 45, was displaced from the mid-west and now works as a maid in

Kathmandu. Her statement highlights her awareness of exploitation:

People don't say anything bad to my face. But sometimes their behavior might be different. They know I am just a woman and will not complain. Or even if I complain no one will support me…. Sometimes when I do some work … they can pay me less than other people …. I cannot fight because I need whatever employment I can get.

- Jhami Roka, Magar widow head, Kathmandu, 2008.

Notwithstanding apprehensions surrounding social perceptions/surveillance, balancing home and

work, and vulnerability to exploitation, widow heads stated that entering the labor market had had an

empowering significance for them in many ways. Common to other studies of female headship and

gender norms (Sylvia Chant 1997), widows never used the language of ‘burden’ or ‘sorrow’ to describe

situations of social and economic stress due to their decision to work. On the contrary, they reported


pride in having faced up to the challenges thrown before them. For instance, Kalpana Bhandari had

trained to become a microbus driver and recounted her story with great enthusiasm; similarly, Sunita

Bohara related the difficulties and triumphs of working as a pharmacy assistant in the beginning. Renu

Thapa, a 32-year-old widow head in Chitwan started working in the office of a travel agency and

described the experience in the following way:

… I had never worked before. I did not know how to keep books or even talk to people …but working here has taught me many things. I feel more capable to decide things for my family. …When my relatives said things about me going out to work, I was scared because I thought I might not get support from them. … But now I know that even if they don’t help, I can survive and take care of my children.

- Renu Thapa, Chhetri widow head, Morang.

Widow heads also relied on their ability to work as a way out of being in a relationship solely of

dependence with kin: ‘at least they know I will not always have my arm stretched in front of them’

said one widow head, miming the gesture made by beggars in Nepal while seeking alms. Stepping

out of home to work increased widow heads’ self-esteem, which then enabled them to appropriate

spaces of agency for themselves and to increase the range of options available to them. In an

abstract sense and only when questioned did widow heads acknowledge the overall post-conflict

landscape where they shared these struggles with other widows. Rather, it was through everyday,

immediate, and ‘ongoing private battles in the face of considerable public odds’ (Sylvia Chant

1997: 224), that they saw themselves as survivors and agents.

‘My hands were tied’: sale of assets

Besides paid employment, a shorter-term coping strategy was the sale of assets and jewelry. Almost all

widow heads – in rural as well as in urban contexts – reported having sold some assets at a point of

severe stress and financial difficulty in the post-conflict period. These assets most frequently included

jewelry or silver utensils that the widow had brought with her at the time of getting married, a

common thread in narratives of survival in South Asia (see also Amirthalingam and Lakshman 2009

for sale of assets by refugees as a short-term survival strategy in Sri Lanka). The vulnerable time at

which such jewelry was sold was to cover household expenses in the immediate aftermath of the

husband's death, a most vulnerable time. Subsequently widow heads found longer-term solutions such

as taking up jobs or entering into petty trade. In three cases where the widows were army wives, they

received compensation when their soldier husbands had been killed in action, amounting usually to

NRs. 10 lakhs. However, all widows stated that they sold jewelry when they had no other immediate

sources of financial succor: ‘my hands were tied’ (majboor thiyo). In some cases, they had pawned the

jewelry and subsequently lost these to the moneylender. In a couple of cases where jewelry had been

pawned widows were able to pay back their debts and retrieve their jewelry, but in general, jewelry

pawned was considered as good as sold. Assets lost in this manner eroded the resource base that

widows started out with, a source of great financial and emotional stress especially if the jewelry had


had family significance.

In the rural or semi-rural context, women had also sold animals to make ends meet, most commonly

cows, oxen, goats and chickens. In some cases, rearing and selling animals had evolved into a longer-

term, diversified livelihood strategy. Only in two cases had women sold immovable property (house or

land). They were able to do so because the titles had been transferred to their names when their

husbands died. Given gender norms, widows’ right to their husband's property – especially agricultural

land – can be a site of severe contestation in Nepal, even though the legal framework supports

inheritance by widows (Author 2014; Katherine Rankin 2003). These sales were prompted by

household distress or insecurity, compounded by the women's inability to manage these lands due to

lack of labor resources. However, most women simply did not have immovable assets under their

control to be able to make sale decisions in times of need.

The household, spaces of agency, and ‘negotiated headship’

The study of widow headship and household arrangements highlights the dynamic nature of post-

conflict household formations and the adaptive strategies of alternative household arrangements. This

dynamism is missed by surveys that capture household composition at a given point in time. Even

during peacetime, the household is a fraught concept with critical studies problematizing conventional

economic assumptions around family structures, especially in non-Western societies (Robert Netting,

Richard Wilk and Eric Arnould 1984, Jeanne Koopman 1991). Tilman Brück and Kati Schindler

(2009) argue that the definition and functions of households become even more fluid during and after

conflict. Examining intra-household structures and processes through these partial life histories of

widow heads provides a glimpse into exactly how households function as economic units, as well as

processes of contestation and disruption within this unit. It can also reveal information regarding when

widow heads are able to exercise agency, when they are constrained, and how.

Becoming a widow is entirely circumstantial. However, the decisions made afterwards with respect to

the household do involve agency, albeit with some constraints, on the part of widow heads. Most

notably some agency emerges in decision-making on whether or not to remarry and whether or not to

move (back) with natal or marital kin, i.e. change household status.

In semi-structured interviews, widows were asked if they had ever considered remarriage. Upper caste

widows – Bahun and Chhetri – have less flexibility in terms of deciding to remarry. Several upper

caste women would simply laugh off the question and say that that was not possible to do, for fear of

loss of existing kin support, resources, or children, and of social ridicule. Widow heads acknowledged

that gendered double standards, whereby men could practice polygamy but widowed women could


not freely remarry, persisted in the post-conflict period (Focus Group, Kathmandu, 2008).

Tharu and Magar women, however, pointed to examples of other widows they knew who had

remarried. The widow’s age seemed to matter, reflecting Sylvia Chant’s (1997: 15) discussion on

remarriage being a greater possibility for younger de jure female heads. In addition, cultural norms

around remarriage were crucial: remarriage is more acceptable in janjati communities and widows are

more likely to have family (marital and natal) support if they decide to remarry. Still, there were

additional considerations. Bishnu Mahato, a 38-year-old Tharu woman, explained her personal

decision to not remarry in the following way:

Many women remarried …but I decided not to. …No, my family would not have objected, but it was me. I did not feel like it …I wanted to focus on bringing up my children (two sons, ages 5 and 7, and one daughter, aged 14). …There were two other women nearby whose husbands were also killed and they got married again. But they were much younger …only 20 years old. …I was worried about how my children would be treated. …

- Bishnu Mahato, Tharu widow head, Dang, 2008.

In her study of widows in Sri Lanka, Jennifer Hyndman (2008: 114) reports widows’ fears that new

husbands may abuse (‘torture’) their children from an earlier marriage. While the fear of outright

abuse was not articulated as such, Bishnu’s statement does reveal anxiety around the status of children.

This apprehension can be a significant deterrent to remarriage even in communities where remarriage

is socially accepted. At the same time, widow heads emphasized that remarriage was appropriate for

young widows ‘who had only had sorrow (dukkha) … and no joys of married life or having children,’

(Focus Group, Rolpa, 2008). In some contrast to Kanchana Ruwanpura’s (2008: 420) findings in Sri

Lanka, Nepali widows were empathetic and understood the need for younger, issueless widows to

remarry quickly. However, that they only mentioned younger, childless widows as candidates for

remarriage indicates the need for perpetuating ‘standards of upright conduct’ and a deep awareness of

‘appropriate’ behavior (chal-chalan) in the face of social scrutiny.

The decision to remain nuclear was a second area where WHHs had exercised a degree of agency. In

instances where women had moved to Kathmandu along with their husbands, they were able to make

a case for staying on in the city for the sake of their children’s educational and their own employment

opportunities. Widow heads used motherhood and being a ‘good mother’ – one dedicated to the

welfare of her children – as bargaining tools. Tilaja Pun, age 30, moved to Kathmandu when her

husband, a soldier, was posted at the army headquarters. She has a 10-year-old son and a 6-year-old

daughter. Upon the death of her husband, her marital kin wanted her to move back to her home in

mid-western Nepal. She recalls:

They wanted me to go back … (they said) what would I do here now that he is gone. I told them that the children are in a good school …Kathmandu is where the opportunities are. … I have some relatives in the city and so then my father-in-law finally said yes.


- Tilaja Pun, Magar widow head, Kathmandu, 2011.

As Naila Kabeer (2001: 21) notes, agency may take various forms, including but not limited to

‘bargaining, negotiation, deception, manipulation, subversion, resistance and protest as well as the

more intangible, cognitive processes of reflection and analysis.’ Ensuring educational opportunities

for children was usually the overt reason presented by widows to their kin as justification for

staying away, although many confessed in interviews that staying in Kathmandu was also

advantageous to them in escaping the excessive control or scrutiny they would likely face upon

moving back. These widow heads reappropriated a gendered trope – motherhood – to access some

freedoms, as well to validate any perceived ‘transgression’ (Kanchana Ruwanpura 2006:137),

indicating the existence of agency in the awareness and manipulation of roles assigned to women

within patriarchy.

Rural widow heads, especially high-caste widows, had relatively less autonomy in this regard. The

village was not only home, but also the place that provided a social safety net in the form of kin

relationships. As a result, in proximal and patrilocal WHHs (see Table 3), some aspects of headship

were often negotiated. In other words, although widows in proximal WHHs were clearly the

primary income earners, decision-making within the extended marital household was often a

complicated process fraught with bargaining, compromise, and on occasion, acrimony. Shanti

Adhikari, a 35-year-old widow head working in a small factory describes these negotiations thus:

My father-in-law cannot work or do anything but he is still important… I earn the money in our household. I am the one struggling for the family, but my opinions are less important. When I say something against him … he tells me that I have changed after his son died…. So I tell him, if I had not changed and become like this, we would not have survived.

- Shanti Adhikari, Bahun widow head, Saptari, 2011.

Shanti is a high-caste widow and has male children (two sons aged 16 and 10 respectively). Being the

mother of her dead husband’s children arguably allowed her to voice her objections on occasion, albeit

within limits. She was insistent, however, that if her marital kin felt too strongly about something, she

would go along with it rather than anger them. Similarly, Kabita Poudel, age 35, describes

relationships of dependence where property or larger decisions are concerned, although having

freedom in everyday decision-making.

If it is something big, like selling a buffalo or settling debt, then I have to ask my brother-in-law (husband’s brother) about it ... But I take care of everyday expenses and decisions in running the household. …He is the one to help if we face any problems ….

- Kabita Poudel, Bahun widow head, Dang, 2008.

While both widow heads had to abide by certain rules, they also described their autonomy in terms of

decision-making about children, i.e. sending them to school, deciding upon age of marriage etc.

The process by which the power to make decisions at home is negotiated illustrates gendered norms at


work. In the case of traditional economic models of the (male headed) household, the primary earner,

the one with control over the resources, is also the one with the ability to make decisions, assumed to

be altruistically taking other household members' utility functions as arguments of his own. In the case

of WHHs, however, being the primary earner comes with no guarantee of being able to make

important decisions around the house. This is not to say that income brings no economic

independence or autonomy to widow heads; rather that this autonomy is constrained by cultural

expectations that widows (even if they are primary income earners, managers of the household and

responsible for its survival) work quietly, have no aspirations, and keep to themselves. It is also not that

widow heads have not contested these social norms that place certain expectations upon them.

However, they are often in the position of choosing their battles – and their strategies – carefully so as

not to alienate kin support entirely (Kanchana Ruwanpura 2006; Author 2014).

For nuclear widow heads, negotiating these social norms and kin preferences when they ran counter to

their own perspectives was easier, but still required diplomacy. When Kalpana Bhandari, age 36,

started to drive a microbus much to the chagrin of relatives in Kathmandu, she had to explain her

choice of employment:

They were skeptical … about working with males … also about being out until late. … But I convinced them slowly by saying that I was doing this to ensure a good future for my son. … I did not quarrel (jhhagda kardaina), but persistently explained to them ….

- Kalpana Bhandari, Bahun widow head, Kathmandu, 2008.

Before being widowed and moving to Kathmandu, Kalpana, had been married for 15 years to her

husband. Kalpana speculated that being an older widow and having a son worked to her advantage in

the discussion with marital relatives, but emphasized the importance of ‘keeping relatives happy’.

Children’s welfare: ensuring a future

One way widow heads coped with financial stress and the intensification of their workdays upon taking

up employment was through utilizing the labor of other household members. As Kanchana

Ruwanpura (2006) has also pointed out in the case of post-conflict Sri Lanka, children, especially older

children, were a crucial resource in this context. Older children participated in one of two ways: an

increase in children's labor market participation (usually in the informal sector), or an increase in their

participation in domestic work substituting for their mother's labor within the household. While it is

possible that a larger sample reveals gendered patterns identified in Sri Lanka by Ruwanpura (2006:

130), with older sons taking up external employment and older daughters taking up more housework,

the sample used in this study did not provide clear indications. All children below 16 attended schoolxi,

except in one case of a displaced widow head where poverty had prevented education of one widow

head's son for about two years. She later received help from an NGO to be able to send her son to


school again. In addition, however, older children (both boys and girls) did help with housework such

as house maintenance, taking care of animals and small vegetable gardens, and in some cases, cooking

as well. Children in their later teens had, in some cases, started working outside the home and

supplementing household income.

While looking into the implications of widow headship for children was not a primary objective for this

study, the cases in Nepal reveal some interesting preliminary information. Nearly all of the widow

heads in Nepal emphasized the importance of education for their children. However, financially

weaker widow heads, and widow heads from the janjati communities in particular, seemed to

emphasize the importance of education for their children much more than the better-off households.xii

Indeed, some widow heads underscored the importance of education for girls more than for boys. A

widow head from Rolpa argued,

When women are educated they will not be treated badly by anyone. They will not be dependent on their husbands for everything. If the situation becomes bad, they can survive with the help of their education. … They can understand if someone is exploiting them.

- Lila Budhathoki, Magar widow head, Rolpa, 2008.

The rationale widow heads seemed to employ behind educating girls also differed in its objective than

educating boys. Boys needed to be educated in order to make them productive members who could be

relied upon at a later date to run the household and take on its responsibility eventually. On the other

hand, several widow heads stated that girls needed to be educated so that they had possibilities of

having a different life from that of their mother. Talking about her oldest daughter who, at the time,

was training to be a rural health care worker, another widow head stated:

I got married when I was 16. I did not know anything and came to my husband's house, started working for the family. I don't want my daughter to face the same situation. I am educating her because I want her to have opportunities I did not have.

- Krishnakala Gharti, Magar widow head, Rolpa, 2008.

Krishnakala’s emphasis on her daughters’ education emerges from her own lack of access to education

due to early marriage. Through educating her daughters, she was creating what Naila Kabeer and

Ayesha Khan (2014: 20) have referred to as an ‘intergenerational pathway of empowerment’ in their

study of Afghan women who similarly used their meager resources to invest in a ‘better future for their

daughters.’

Since many widow heads now found it necessary to perform market work, several household

responsibilities – cooking, cleaning, childcare, gardening and animal rearing – fell to older children.

Widow heads are thus placed in a difficult dilemma: despite the emphasis they placed on children’s

education, the scarcity of time resources increased their reliance on older children to shoulder some

responsibilities for house- or ‘outside’ work. It is possible, therefore, that children also faced a ‘double

day’ between school and other work. Further research is required to trace the intergenerational and


intrahousehold welfare implications of widow headship.

CONCLUSION: WIDOW HEADSHIP AND AGENCY The article emphasizes the necessity of disaggregating FHHs to recognize their heterogeneity and to

trace the contours of household vulnerability of WHHs, a distinct subset of FHHs. Since household

surveys fail to explain the complex intersections between economic and social vulnerability that

widow-headed households experience, ethnographic data is used to unravel the coping strategies of

WHHs in post-conflict Nepal. The narratives of widow heads in Nepal reveal that despite the

structures of constraint imposed by struggles of survival and mediation of social norms, spaces of

agency arise in widow heads’ everyday lives. Table 5 provides a summary of these moments of agency,

as they emerge within the overarching context of coping.

At the same time, this agency is negotiated and discontinuous. Factors that circumscribed widow

heads’ ability to exercise agency included the type of household and proximity to kin networks (nuclear

vs. proximal) and the types of resources in question (land vs. other assets and employment). Kin

networks played a significant role in determining how widow heads negotiated spaces for action. For

instance, while widows did not persist with inheritance claims, they did make a case for greater

mobility/employment outside the home. In a context where the conflict had limited the ability of kin

to render help, the extended family acquiesced after a time to such requests, conditional upon widow

heads upholding norms of ‘good behavior’. As such, widow heads worked within the framework of

patriarchal social norms even as they manipulated prevailing gender tropes – namely being a ‘good’

mother, having sons, or having been a faithful wife – to achieve a greater degree of everyday freedoms.

They were also careful to not irreparably damage relations through drastic actions, since these

relations formed the nucleus of social support they could most immediately rely upon in an exigency;


rather, bargaining and negotiation were preferred tools. In this sense, kin networks were a space where

oppression and resistance played out simultaneously (Kanchana Ruwanpura 2008).

Widow heads’ accounts also capture complexities of agency that simple quantitative measurement is

unable to reveal. They refute simplistic associations of household ‘headship’ with control over

resources or undisputed, continuous decision-making power. Further, they point to how social context

– cultural and gender norms – configures the subtle processes that place invisible limits upon agency

(Naila Kabeer 2001). Finally, they reveal that even as widow heads appropriate spaces for action, their

struggles remain isolated and individual, raising questions regarding the transformatory potential of

the fragmented agency that emerges herein. From this feminist project of knowledge construction

through WHHs’ perspectives on coping, a warning emerges for development agencies and

practitioners seeking to amplify this fragmented agency into eventual empowerment. Efforts to support

or augment widow heads’ agency – through laws on inheritance or ownership of property, or

programs on credit access or employment provision – will remain cursory without an understanding of

the social norms and networks widow heads are embedded in, since these delineate the parameters of

choice. Thus a policy agenda focused on examining gendered vulnerabilities, equity, and well being in

post-conflict societies should consider not only access to tangible resources, but also the ‘intangibles’ –

i.e. the matrices of social dependence, women’s subjectivities, and the power relations governing access

and inclusion – that determine freedoms.

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ENDNOTES

i There is significant disagreement on the numbers of the disappeared. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) estimated in April 2011 that around 1300 people were missing due to conflict-related causes (ICRC 2009). Local NGOs report a higher number: the Society of Families of the Disappeared (SOFD) puts this figure at 5700, while the National Human Rights Commission had 3397 complaints of disappearance during the armed conflict registered with them as of August 2010 (Nepal Monitor 2011).

ii Nepal is no exception, therefore, to other places in South Asia where upper caste women face more stringent restrictions – as a marker of social status – in terms of employment and mobility (see also Martha Chen 1995: 38; Esther Boserup 1970: 69-70). iii The new Constitution remains to be written. While a Constituent Assembly was formed in 2007, lack of progress led to its dissolution in 2012. Since then, several deadlines have since been missed, as the process remains hamstrung by severe disagreements between stakeholders and political parties. iv Around a quarter of all households in Nepal had at least one member living abroad (CBS 2011). Around 95 percent of migrants from Nepal are men (World Bank 2005). In addition, within country male migration is a contributor to de facto female headship. v Some widows reported having received some remittances from relatives on occasion (during festivals for instance), but these were irregular and unreliable at best. vi WHR prefers the label ‘single women’ rather than ‘widow’. The organization states that the word ‘widow’ in Nepali – bidhwa – carries ‘negativity and disdainful societal views (sic.)’ which leaves many women humiliated and distressed. The organization claims that widows constitute more than 90 percent of its membership, although divorced, abandoned, and separated women are also members. vii This figure reports average of cash income alone. This is an approximation since widow heads carried out some subsistence production in the rural context. Some widows also received part of their wages or occasional gifts in kind from kin networks that supplemented their household consumption. viii The Nepalese caste system, as codified in the Muluki Ain edict of 1854, is based on varnas or four primary and strictly hierarchical caste divisions (Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Shudra) and jat (roughly equivalent to sub-castes under these predominant varnas). Among the jat are the tagadharis (wearers of the sacred thread, predominantly the Bahuns – or Brahmins - and the Chhetris – or Kshatriyas), matwalis (liquor drinkers, from the indigenous tribes or janjatis of Nepal) and the so-called ‘untouchables’ (Dalits) (see Karki et al. 2004, p. 18). ix In the context of urban households, Sylvia Chant (1989:136) refers to nuclear compound households where related families may ‘share the same plot of land or living space, but do not share financial resources or basic domestic functions … they effectively operate as independent units.’ Proximal households share with nuclear compound households the feature of spatial proximity, but are placed in


a rural context. Proximal households may or may not share the same compound, however, and are a somewhat broader category used here to refer to WHHs placed close to their kin. x All names have been changed to protect anonymity. Surnames (also changed) retain broad caste affiliation. xi The lack of disruption in children’s education is noteworthy for a post-conflict context, but may be explained by the increased emphasis on primary education by both the Maoists as well as the large number of non-governmental organizations in Nepal operating through the conflict. See also Christina Valente (2013). xii The better-off households did educate their children, but the emphasis on education placed by the less well-off households – as a way out of poverty – and indeed the sacrifices made by these widow heads (taking on debt, for instance) to ensure that their children went to school indicated that education was a high priority in these households.

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Unpacking Widow Headship and Agency in Post-Conflict Nepal