Widow inheritance (also known as bride inheritance) is a cultural and social practice whereby a widow is required to marry a male relative of her late husband, often his brother. The practice is more commonly referred as a levirate marriage, examples of which can be found in ancient and biblical times.
The practice was instituted as a means for the widow to have someone to support her and her children financially and to keep her late husband's wealth within the family bloodline. When the practice was initiated, women were responsible for the house chores, and men were the providers. If a woman lost her husband, she would, therefore, have no one to provide for the remaining family. Because her in-laws would not want someone outside of the family's blood line to inherit her late husband's estate, she was required to marry within the family.
In different cultures, that can have various forms and functions that serve in relative proportions as a social protection for and control over the widow and her children. She may have the right to require her late husband's extended family to provide her with a new man, or she may conversely have the obligation to accept the man put forward by the family with no real prospect of turning him down if her birth family does not accept her back into its home.
The custom is sometimes justified on the basis that it ensures that the wealth does not leave the patrilineal family. It is also sometimes justified as a protection for the widow and her children. The practice has existed in varied cultures and historical periods and is a custom in several Sub-Saharan Africa nations and ethnic groups.
Judaism
A form of widow inheritance is part of Mosaic law in which it is known as levirate marriage (see yibbum). A feature of that practice is that the dead husband's brother must marry his dead brother's widow. That applies, however, only if the widow (and consequently the deceased husband) has no children. However, there are mechanisms whereby either party may avoid such a marriage.
Afghanistan In Pashtun communities, the code known as Pashtunwali requires a widow to marry her dead husband's brother or cousin regardless of her will. The code also requires her children to be treated as children of the new husband. The Taliban campaigned against the practice as being against shariah law.
Widowhood in Sub-Saharan Africa The circumstances of widows in Sub-Saharan African nations are complicated by both economic challenges and traditional social expectations. As of 2015, over 9 million widows face extreme poverty in sub-Saharan Africa. In many nations, policy contributes to the inability of widows to acquire economic independence after the death of their husbands. A widow may need to abide by widow inheritance traditions and remain with the husband's family, often requiring her to marry the husband's brother, to ensure that she remains in possession of property.
Widow inheritance traditions are particularly prevalent in Sub-Saharan Africa compared to the rest of the continent, and such traditions are reported across many nations in the region. Widows face a lack of legal rights to family property because of gender-discriminatory legal systems. They are unlikely to have the resources to use legal systems as a means of fighting traditional power structures. There are many formal and informal rules concerning the inheritance of property, particularly land for rural women, that inhibit stable economic conditions. Those limitations cause widows to be coerced into inheritance traditions as a means of maintaining stability for their families. These widow inheritance traditions often include "cleansing" rituals, depending on the traditional culture of a given region.
In many Sub-Saharan regions, such as within the Ovambo culture of Namibia, formal and informal structures of gender inequality force widows to sacrifice their independence for inheritance traditions within the late husband's family or externally. Widow inheritance often emerges to combat property loss and social rejection and to forced remarriage to a brother of the deceased husband is a common widow inheritance tradition that many traditional cultures promote.
Many modern legal systems in Sub-Saharan Africa, such as in Tanzania, have attempted to combat the customary law that enforces structures of inheritance and disinheritance. However, poor application and enforcement of the modern legal systems ensures that customary law remains the default in countries such as Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Premature widowhood Widow inheritance traditions are exacerbated by the prevalence of premature widowhood across Sub-Saharan Africa, such as in Igbo people in Nigeria. Premature widowhood is linked to severe consequences of poverty, as there are intergenerational implications of young women with dependent children facing widowhood. Women who were dependent on their husbands as their source of income face major challenges if they become widows, as there are many places like Kenya in Sub-Saharan Africa in which women's paid employment is scarce, low paid and often socially unacceptable. In many regions, female financial independence is difficult to achieve, and a single woman is also socially unacceptable. A severe lack of state welfare provisions, such as healthcare, childcare systems and education, encourage widows to find other modes of financial stability. Those factors greatly contribute to the perseverance of widow inheritance traditions.
Disinheritance practices Widows are motivated to remarry and partake in widow inheritance traditions because of disinheritance practices in Sub-Saharan Africa. Disinheritance occurs when widows are dispossessed by their late husband's family, which can take the form of losing control of family land, outright eviction, abandonment of familial relations and (in more dire conditions) confiscation of the children by the late husband's family. Rural Sub-Saharan African women face a level of disinheritance that is higher than in any other global region. Sub-Saharan widows, particularly in Kenya and Nigeria, experience a higher prevalence of eviction risk by relatives. Disinheritance and property theft have been reported by both rural and urban Nigerian widows. The Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada depicts a common situation in the following summation of expert evidence provided to them:
The disinheritance of widows has been coined as "grabbing" across Sub-Saharan Africa. The term "grabbing" refers to the immediate actions of eviction and property theft, and those customs are often enabled and bolstered by legal systems. For example, in Eswatini, widows are not given any rights to property in the eyes of the law. These grabbing traditions are prevalent in Angola, Botswana, RotC, DRC, Eswatini, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Widow inheritance and re-marriage becomes a necessary "safety net" for widows that do not have other options to maintain livelihood.
Gender inequality and ancient traditions Some African scholars maintain that widowhood rites are an ancient practice in Africa and Nigeria (including Yoruba and Igbo cultures), and that they are harmful to African women, as they are mistreated, blamed for murdering the deceased husband, and inherited as property by another man from the husband's family.Adekanye, T.O. (1988). Women and rural poverty: Some considerations from Nigeria. African Notes, 3, 63-67.Ikpeme, N.J. (2020). Widowhood rites and social stigma: Examining the process of re-integration and attitude of community members. International Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities Reviews,10, 3, 274 –296.Omotayo, O. A. & Fasoro, J. O. (2022). Moral issues in gender discrimination in yoruba culture. Aquino Journal of Philosophy, 2, 2, 161-172.
In his article "Widowhood Practices in Some Nigerian Societies. A Retrospective Examination" (2015), Joseph Olukayode Akinbi notes that modernization has improved the situation of Nigerian women by preventing certain aspects of widowhood rites in some cases. For example, if a woman works in a bank or company, it is less likely that she will be forced to wear black for a year or not leave her house for a month, practices that are part of widowhood rites in some communities.
Forms Widow inheritance can take many different modes: forced remarriage to a brother of the deceased husband, returning to the widow's parents' home or a more exploitive inheritance to professional traveling widow inheritors. The prevalence of each form varies between sub-Saharan regions and across ethnic groups, and patterns of kinship and inheritance patterns cannot be ascribed uniformly because of stark differences in ethnic traditions. For example, in Kenya, for the Nandi, it is infrequent for a widow to participate in levirate marriage, but for the Luo, widow inheritance is a cultural requirement.
Inheritance is often distinct from marriage, as "cleansing" practices often are a prerequisite for a widow after the death of her husband. Widows are then inherited by a man, often her late-husband's brother, after she has been "cleansed", or ritually purified. This tradition is enforced in the Luo in Kenya, as a woman must engage in sexual intercourse without a condom to achieve purity before she can remarry. Many men have commercialized and exploited the practice by becoming professional widow inheritors, as many in-law relatives of widows are less inclined to perform the "cleansing" practices themselves for fear of contracting HIV from the widow. It is becoming common in Kenya for professional widow-inheritors to receive compensation for completing inheritance practices. Professional inheritors travel to different communities to inherit widows for financial gain, and often coerce widows to comply with sexual rituals in exchange for providing support.
Many widows enter an inheritance contract for companionship and social, economic, and emotional support, and widow inheritance for these purposes is generally long-term and monogamous. Widow inheritance for the purpose of executing a sexual ritual or "cleansing" is generally short-term and often involves more inheritors.
"Cleansing" practices "Cleansing" is a form of ritual purification rites being culturally prescribed for women after the death of her husband and often involving forced sexual intercourse with a male "inheritor" of the widow. The practice has not been systematically outlawed across Sub-Saharan Africa but rather is encouraged in many rural communities such as the Luo in Kenya and Tanzania and the Igbo in Nigeria. Cleansing occurs since it is believed to free the widow from a supernatural connection to her dead husband's spirit. It is very common for such "cleansing" procedures to be the only choice that widows have in the wake of their husband's death, as without a proper cleansing, the widow and her family will be socially rejected. The rituals are frequently traumatic violations in which widows may be forced to drink the water in which their dead husband's body was washed and are coerced into sex with a relative or inheritor.
In extreme circumstances, widows may be required to "have sex with their husband's dead body" to complete a cleansing ritual. These traditions are rooted in spiritual fears of contamination, and have been reported in a number of countries of Sub-Saharan Africa. The superstitions of "evil spirits" inhabiting widows before "cleansing" are norms in many communities, and widows are often not permitted to work or interact with those outside their families until the cleansing is executed. Women who violate those norms may face severe social stigma and repercussions in their community.