Influence of Widowhood Practice on Psycho-economic Welfare of the Widows in Rural Communities of Imo State Nigeria

Abstract

The travails of widows in Imo State include a long period of incarceration during mourning, an obligatory poor standard of hygiene, deprivation of the husbands' property and maltreatment by his relatives, enforcement of persistent wailing and sitting beside the husbands' corpses. These directly have negative psychological, financial, sexual and social impacts on widows. This article examines how the widows could be helped by family members and government to ameliorate these problems. The researcher adopts simple random sampling technique to select 200 widows from Isiala-Mbano and Ehime-Mbano local governments. The instrument used for the study was tagged Widowhood Practice Assessment Scale (WPAS) r = 0.85. Two research questions were raised for the study. The data collected were collated and analyzed using Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient. The result shows that widowhood practice has a significant influence on poverty among the widows(r=.574 , N=200, P<.01). There is positive influence of widowhood practice on psychological well-being of widows (r=.469**, N=200, P<.01). However, based on the findings, it was recommended that Nigerian lawmakers should legislate against all oppressive, injurious and degrading widowhood practices.