Widows: The Last Feminist Taboo

by Mineke Schipper

In Japanese, the word for widow – a woman who has outlived her husband – literally translates as ‘she who has not yet died.’ For millennia, widows have lived on the margins of banished to the wilderness, silenced, and shrouded in black or white. Across cultures, laws and local customs have maligned them as witches, dependants or objects of pity.

In some traditions, widows are expected to remarry within the husband’s family, or even – in extreme cases – commit self-immolation – expectations not placed on men. Yet widowhood has also brought unexpected financial, social and sexual autonomy denied to married women. In medieval Europe, widows owned property and ran businesses; in India’s Maratha courts, they wielded political influence long before married women could.

Drawing on sources from Ancient Egypt and Greece to Africa, the Americas and beyond, cultural historian Mineke Schipper explores widowhood as both oppression and liberation. Widows reveals one of feminism’s last great taboos, and the story of women the world has long refused to see.

Genres: Nonfiction, Feminism, History

288 pages, Hardcover

Expected publication January 19, 2027

About the author

Mineke Schipper is a Dutch author of non-fiction and fiction. As a scholar she is best known for her work on comparative literature mythologies and intercultural studies.

Mineke Schipper studied French and Philosophy at Amsterdam Free University and Literary Theory, followed by Comparative Literary Studies at the University of Utrecht. She started her career teaching French and African Literature at the Université Libre du Congo (between 1964 and 1972). She received her PhD in Amsterdam in 1973, writing the first thesis in the Netherlands on African literature) and dedicated herself to developing the field of intercultural literary studies. In 1988 she became the first Professor of Intercultural Literary Studies in the Netherlands, at the Free University of Amsterdam. In 1993 she moved to Leiden University where she played a dynamic role in building intercultural bridges in researching and lecturing comparative literature in a global context.

In 1999 she received an honorary doctorate from Chengdu University (Sichuan Province) in China. Since 2000 she has been regularly invited by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) where she collaborates with colleagues on projects about epics and creation myths. In December 2008 she gave her farewell address at the University of Leiden.

Mineke Schipper lives in Amsterdam.

Reviews

[Mars · Rating 4 out of 5]

This got me out of a reading slump instantly because it was just so fascinating. Widows discusses the process of grieving and mourning in different cultures and religions but highlights the fact that widowhood is essentially influenced by men’s fear and distrust of women in all cultural contexts. I learned so much about varying customs and how widows across the world have been marginalized and devalued. I highly recommend this one, it talks about everything from child brides, witchcraft as a tool to exploit women and steal property…It’s another one of those nonfictions reads that angered me but also had me intrigued throughout.

[Cerys Bennison · Rating 4.25 out of 5]

This book is fascinating, letting widows’ testimonies from around the world transmit cultural attitudes in clear prose. I would have liked to hear a little more about the cultural history of how widows are portrayed to add to these accounts, but I loved it and would heartily recommend!

[Gillian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Published in UK 10 September 2026 so my own purchase not a gift.