Why Women Can’t Attend Funerals of Their Loved Ones?
Not every culture allows women to take part in the last rites
This story is about women’s non-participation in funeral rites and rituals. In various cultures, they have to fight to attend the cremation or the burial of their loved ones. Patriarchs stop them with labels of traditions and religious protocols.
Especially in most Asian societies, historically, performing funerary rituals has been a male privilege. Sometimes, women are not expressly banned from attending, but they are discouraged from being present or participating. They don’t have the choice to come to closure with the dead.
Only the male family members carry and accompany the bier of a dead body to the cremation ground in Hindu society. Wives, sisters, daughters, or other female members don’t attend the funeral. They are not allowed to share the responsibility like their male counterparts.
Ancient Hindu religious text Garuda Purana does not forbid Hindu women from performing the rites. But it prescribes that only the deceased’s eldest son should perform the last rituals of a person. In his absence, any male relative can perform the rites. This simply means that a woman performing last rites is not welcome. It is seen as a tradition now.
The reason provided is that the deceased will be cursed and not get Moksha or liberation if a female performs the rituals. Another reason given is that attending a funeral is terrible for women’s emotional health, a view many women will strongly disagree with.
Participation in the family rituals also reveals the equations of the responsibilities deceased’s children share. Sometimes conducting last rites is directly related to their property rights. Until a few years back, daughters didn’t have property rights in Hindu families.
There are few high-profile cases of women attending the funerals of their relatives. Also, this happens mainly in big cities, where they can be present at the funeral. In most places performing the last rituals by women is considered an insult.
Women in China are also excluded from funeral rites. Men play the primary role while burying their parents. Women are not allowed to enter the family burial ground, and their names are not written into ledgers recording donors of monetary gifts, which is a tradition.
In Islamic societies, women are either prohibited from going to burials or discouraged (makruh). Although, a wife is expected to be in mourning for her husband for four months ten days. In pre-Islamic Arabia, women worked as professional wailers. Islam prohibited wailing at funerals.
Often in the death businesses, women are not always welcome. Most funeral directors in South Korea are men. However, more women there are now joining the mortuary industry. There is a rising preference for women’s bodies to be handled by women only.
In the US and Europe, stereotypes about women funeral directors still exist. Many believe women are not strong enough to lift coffins, or pregnant workers might be exposed to embalming chemicals. However, a growing number of women are taking up a career in the funeral business.
Luo women of Kenya take all important funeral decisions. Right from the time of death until the burial and even after Luo women play a critical role in the arrangements. Among the rituals they are involved with, wailing and inheritance rights are included.