It's not easy to be a widow in India, says Ginny Shrivastava.
"They are perceived often as being the cause of their husband's deaths," says the Ontario native, who has lived in India for 40 years. These women are often denounced as witches, shunned at weddings, robbed of rights and property and even cast out by their own families.
And there are about 33 million of them, she notes. "There are more widows in India than there [are] people in Canada."
When she learned this fact in 1998, she says she felt compelled to help. The result was a 31,000-strong group called the Association for Strong Women Alone and a Nobel Peace Prize nomination for Shrivastava. She's in town at the St. Albert United Church this week to speak about the power of widowed women in India.
It's a story that should help people realize the force of collective action, says talk organizer Betty Mackey. "It's raising awareness of what the power of one is."
A Canadian in India
Shrivastava, who has a doctorate in adult education, says she decided to move to India from Ontario in 1970 after marrying her Indian husband. "There was great openness and affection on the part of the Indian people to accept me," she says, but it was tough to make girlfriends. As a free-spirited Canadian woman, she clashed with Indian wives, who deferred to their husbands on everything.
India has traditionally been a patriarchal society, she says. "The concept of women is as wife and mother," she says, which makes widows seem ominous and dishonourable. Widows have many rights under Indian law, such as the right to equal pay and to hold property, but superstition often suppresses them, robbing them of pensions, land and dignity.
Shrivastava learned about India's widow population in 1998 from a study by a friend. When the local women's movement didn't seem interested in working with widows, she decided to try organizing the widows. After a statewide convention, she and other organizers created a 31,000-strong group of widows and separated women to lobby for women's rights.
The group uses collective action to help low-income women. If a widow is kept off her land by relatives, for example, local members might lobby those relatives to let her back on. At the district and national levels, they pressure legislators to get widows pensions, health care and education funding.
The movement has created spin-off groups throughout India, Shrivastava says, and inspired many women to get an education and start campaigns on food and water. "All these women now have a new confidence and a new feeling of belonging," she says. "It has awakened a sleeping giant."
Fundraiser
Mackey, who went to school with Shrivastava in Ontario, says she asked her to speak in St. Albert during a recent visit to Canada.
The United Church supports many social movements in India, Mackey says, so she's also holding a fundraiser at the talk. All donations will go towards the Association for Strong Women Alone. Attendees will get to ask Shrivastava about her time in India and have a free Indian supper.
"I think we have much to learn about not sitting back and thinking we are helpless," Mackey says. Canada's women's movement has gone dormant, yet immigrant and First Nations women still need help.
Women can be a powerful force when mobilized, Shrivastava says, and should use that force here to address ongoing issues such as honour killings. "If women try to raise their voices about all kinds of issues, I think things would change."
Shrivastava's talk starts at 6 p.m. Tuesday at the St. Albert United Church. For details, call 780-458-8355.
