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From Robyn
Curnow and Jenni Watts, CNN – March 21, 2013
(CNN) -- Lawyer and human rights activist
Seodi White has long been an outspoken campaigner for gender justice in
As the head of the Malawian chapter of
Women in Law in Southern Africa (WLSA), White is at the forefront of the battle
against inequality, traveling around the country to promote education and to
stop young girls from giving up on school and marrying in their early teens.
But the prominent activist, who is
herself the mother of a young daughter, is not only concerned with the rights
of teenage girls. She is also targeting cultural practices that harm older,
vulnerable women in
'Widow
cleansing'
One such custom, prevalent in the
southern tip of the landlocked country, is "widow cleansing," a
traditional practice in which a widow is expected to have sexual relations,
"in order to cleanse her," explains White.
"There is a belief that if she
does not sleep with someone, the spirit of her dead husband will come and visit
upon her and her family will be cursed," she adds.
White says that the practice is not
forced upon widows. Instead, she says, the tradition has become so much part of
the culture that widows themselves call for it.
"It's a mindset issue," says
White. "Even the widows, they've told me, 'I don't want to die, I don't
want a curse to come to my husband.' They cry to be cleansed."
White says the
tradition, which involves unprotected sex, thus increasing the chances of HIV
infection, has been turned into a business.
"There are professional cleansers
in villages," says White. She says these men charge widows up to $50 for
their services, in a country where the minimum wage is less than $1 per day.
In recent times, there have been
several initiatives by White's NGO, as well as other groups, to try and change
the situation. One effort is to target the "professional cleansers"
in attempt to get them to change their ways.
"Some have actually come out in
the open and said: 'I used to be a commercial cleanser, I'm HIV positive, I've
stopped, it's not fine and I go village by village telling other commercial
cleansers to stop this, it's a risky taboo behavior.'"
The power of
education
A daughter of a professor of English,
White grew up in
White saw first-hand the difference
that education can make to a woman's life, and that's why all her efforts to
promote gender equality -- from campaigning against child marriage and domestic
abuse to protecting widows' rights through her work as a lawyer -- have been
shaped by the transformative power of education.
"In this country, to get ahead in
life, to beat poverty, you need education," she says.
"I know the difference between an
uneducated woman in
"I decided I'm going to dedicate
my life to dealing with injustice, just because I don't like it when a
structure or system puts others in poverty, puts others in a position of
inequality," adds White.
'The
dispossession of widows'
Another campaign spearheaded by White
is the fight against the prevalent culture of property grabbing, one of the
most deep-rooted forms of discrimination suffered by widows in
White says that all across the country
widows are at risk of having their matrimonial property taken by their late
husband's relatives, often leaving them and their children homeless.
"The way our family structures
are done is that when a man and a woman get married they are not considered
related," says White. "A man is still looked at by his family as he
is theirs and the woman is looked at by her family as she is theirs."
White says this
entrenched culture, coupled with a prevalent assumption that women do not have
an earning capacity, has condemned many widows to acute poverty.
"When the husband dies,"
says White, "his people, they come in and say, 'what did our son buy in
this house? Where is the stuff?' They don't look at the stuff as belonging to
the family."
WSLA fought hard for more than 10
years to advance women's rights to keep their marital estate, calling for
reform in
"A law is a law -- it might not
be like it's working immediately, but it's got staying power," says White,
adding that more needs to be done to raise awareness about the reforms and to
inform widows of their rights.
White says that despite all the
difficulties, it is victories like this that make her decision to commit her
life in the fight against gender injustice worthwhile.