Participating in the home: Widows cope in Singapore

Abstract

Widowhood is often described as a traumatic experience for many. For women in particular, widowhood can bring on the loss of an identity and the meanings attached with it. Using Singapore as an example, the paper explores how widows negotiate their new life paths. Using both quantitative and qualitative data, it portrays widows not as apolitical recipients of gendered roles but as active agencies who strategically plan, within the domestic realm of the home space, a role that is useful and even critical for households with dual income. Widows are indispensable in social and physical reproductive work in spite of their families. State ideology, which promotes a caring family, also helps to challenge metaphors of widows as the "fifth wheel." © 2001 Elsevier Science Inc.