Protection of Women’s and Widows’ Rights in the Consequences of Böwö Marriage in Pulau-Pulau Batu District, South Nias Regency

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-513-3_5How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Protection; Giving; Böwö; Marriage; Woman/Widow

Abstract

The community of Pulau-Pulau Batu Subdistrict, South Nias Regency, adheres to a patrilineal kinship system in which, during marriage, the man must give böwö to the woman as a symbol of transferring her kinship membership to her husband’s family. In this system, the woman follows her husband, and the children born from the marriage continue the father’s lineage. This study employs a sociological juridical approach, utilizing both primary and secondary data collected through closed questionnaires, interviews, and field observations conducted across several villages. Each village involved ten respondents and one traditional leader (Si’ulu/Si’ila) who is Christian. The research problem focuses on the protection of women’s and widows’ rights following the granting of böwö in marriage within Pulau-Pulau Batu Subdistrict. The findings reveal that the böwö custom applies to Christian communities, whereas Muslim communities adhere to Islamic law. As a result, within Christian communities, women and widows do not possess rights to marital property after the granting of böwö, whereas in Muslim communities, women and widows retain such rights under Islamic law.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Kosmas Dohu Amajihono
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/12/23
TI  - Protection of Women’s and Widows’ Rights in the Consequences of Böwö Marriage in Pulau-Pulau Batu District, South Nias Regency
BT  - Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Humanities and Social Science (ICHSS 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 39
EP  - 49
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-513-3_5
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-513-3_5
ID  - Amajihono2025
ER  -