I decided to do a bit a research to see what data I could easily access regarding women as heads of households across the globe. I was interested to see what countries I could find data for and in particular if the development status of a country had an effect on whether or not women were heads of household. I was also interested to see what other factors I could find data for connected with this information, such as whether I could find data on race, marriage status, parental status, employment, household income, education, or age. Lastly, I was curious if I would be able to find enough data to examine change over time.

I came across three sources for data, in addition to several scholarly articles synthesizing data on US female headed households (FHHs) and race which I didn’t examine beyond titles. The three main sources that I found were “Women’s Health USA 2012” (https://mchb.hrsa.gov/whusa12/pc/pages/hc.html), The World Bank’s “DataBank” (https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.HOU.FEMA.ZS), and a data booklet published by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), entitled “Household Size and Composition Around the World 2017” (https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/publications/pdf/ageing/household_size_and_composition_around_the_world_2017_data_booklet.pdf). Each of these presented the average percentage of FHHs by country. The data they provided was too limited to indicate change over time. In many cases this was because they only had data for one year. I was at times able to see statistics from two or three years for one country, but it was still insufficient for making larger claims about change over time.

One of these three main sources dealt only with data for the United States and so was unhelpful for examining gender inequality across the world. Nevertheless, “Women’s Health USA 2012,” which uses US Census data from 2011 and included correlating statistics for race and age, did include a definition of FHHs that helped to point out to me ways in which such definitions could vary drastically from country to country. For this source, women as heads of household are defined as having children or other family members living with them and no spouse living with them. This includes single moms, single women with a parent or other relative living in their home, and “women with other household compositions.” But, it does not include single women who live alone, women who are the primary source of income for their family, nor women who self-identify as head of household even for census or tax purposes. I was somewhat surprised by this definition because I wasn’t expecting it to be tied to single status and yet not include single women living alone, nor was I expecting that women who identified in the census as head of household didn’t count in these statistics if they had a male spouse living in their house.

The second main source of data regarding FHHs, The World Bank, provided very limited data but for a greater number of (largely, if not entirely, developing) countries. Although data from 77 countries from between 1990 and 2016 was included, there was only data for one year for many of the countries and there was not data for all of these countries for the same year. In addition, the only data I could find simply indicated percentage of FHHs by country. The bits of narrative detail the website provided indicated that there is also correlated data regarding societal pressures or economic changes that seemed to produce an increase in FHHs in developing countries more than cultural patterns, but it doesn’t provide further details. Similarly, the narrative details also indicate differences in marital statuses of FHHs between developing and developed countries without providing the data. Lastly, it indicates that this data is of particular interest for The World Bank because of the information it can provide related to “feminization of poverty – the process whereby poverty becomes more concentrated among Individuals living in female-headed households” and yet there is no mention of data related to poverty supplied here.

The last of these sources, DESA, only tangentially provides data on FHHs. The main concern of this data booklet is household size. However, it does provide two graphs. One contains information about FHHs by continent. The other adds to that information by also providing data about the parental status of FHHs.

Overall, my sense is that the data for examining gender inequality in relation to the role of women as heads of household is somewhat limited. My sense is that this is largely the result of vastly different definitions of FHHs which makes gathering the data not particularly useful or easy. I sensed that this might be a problem I would run up against when I looked at the definition provided by the first source I mentioned. The narrative details provided by The World Bank’s site also indicates that these varying definitions were highly problematic for their analysis of the data.