Article Published In Vol.13 (Jul-Aug 2025)

Denied Agency, Identity Crisis and the Burden of Loss: How Patriarchy, Cultural Codification shapes Widowhood

Author : Sweta Suman

The conventional understanding of Widowhood is the loss of a spouse, but the idea of widowhood is more than the loss of a spouse. It is an experience that transforms the lives of women and affects their social standing, identity, and livelihood. The stigma associated with widowhood, isolation, and societal structures exposes the larger issues: the Intersection of gender, psychological trauma, identity crisis, loss of autonomy, economic standing, strict austerity, and systematic exclusion. They have legal rights, but the implementation gap and patriarchal interpretation often hinder their effectiveness. It is not only limited to the financial burden or social standing, but the loneliness may cause emotional stress, depression, anxiety, and trauma for a lifetime, and it also causes generational trauma for the children. This particular paper aims to unpack the widow’s lived reality and plight, going beyond the Monolithic perspective of personal and spousal loss, but a socially constructed experience and interwoven with systematic problems as well.

Keywords: Widowhood, socio-cultural construction of widowhood, economic dependence, loss of identity and agency, psychological implications.