Continuities and Discontinuities of Life of Military War Widows in the Post- war Sri Lankan Society
Keywords:
children, civil war, society, widows.Abstract
This article is a result of a study on the war widows of fallen security personals attached to tri forces (Navy, Air and Army) of Sri Lanka. The civil conflict which prevailed for three decades in Sri Lanka ended up with many post war issues in different fields such as peace building, addressing the issues of war affected people etc. War widows are considered as one of the issues during and after arm conflicts and many studies have been conducted in order to investigate the issues of the war widows as well as many facilitating and supportive progarmmes have been organized to address these issues. However, the challenges faced by the military war widows in post-war society in Sri Lanka have not being studied adequately. Hence, this study has examined the challenges of military war widows encountering as a result of continuity and discontinuity of their life circle referring to their life course. It has identified three broad challenges faced by military war widows namely the social challenges, economic challenges and psychological challenges. The study which has employed both the secondary and primary data collection approach has concluded with that the gender roles attached to men and women influence in continuing the life as a widow and it sometimes discontinue the women empowerment such as participating into community events and it creates vulnerability of women’s decision making as a widow.
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