Almost a third of the households (30.4 per cent) were headed by female adults, in most cases widows.

Girls also leave school to help their mothers who have become widows and also when they marry and or have children.

Most African wives dread the season. They become soccer widows, as their husbands flock to bars.

There are female headed households without a link to males because women are unmarried, widowed, divorced or abandoned.

The report notes that women are rarely designated as head of household, except in instances where they are widowed or abandoned.

Current challenges included the provision of income generating schemes for households run by widows, proper care for the injured, relief for those whose property had been confiscated or damaged and temporary shelter.

Many remained widows. But even more women were forced to head their household because the men left the rural areas in search of work.

It is often due to an uneven share of responsibility that women have in running the household, caring for children and even earning a living for the family as war widows.

Jake Adelstein reprinted parts of the scientific article entitled The Uranium Widows Why Would A Community Want To Return To Milling A Radioactive Element? by Peter Hessler, hoping to give some perspective on the radiation fear spreading in Japan.

Widows, 67 per cent of whom are aged between 18 30 years, told me that, even as wives of martyrs with an enhanced status, they are never free in a conservative patriarchal community.