The Pwo is a classic Chokwe mask genre that honours their founding female ancestries as guardians of fertility and procreation.

Chokwe masks were made and worn by men, often performed during the celebrations that mark a completion of initiation into adulthood and with means to honour women who had survived the difficulty of childbirth. The occasion is also said to mark the dissolution of intimate bonds between mothers and their sons, which may be represented through the tear carvings and motifs seen on the face.

Further, facial scarification as seen on this mask would have been used to make the person less desirable to the spirit of death, and in women specifically would mark the birth of a baby boy.