When a woman becomes the head of a household, is she more vulnerable—or is the system failing her?

In this Refugee Archive Roundtable webinar, host Ruth Adeyeye speaks with Azwar Surahman (PhD Candidate, Gadjah Mada University) and Kristi Dawn Riggs (Doctoral Candidate, Georgetown University) to unpack a decade of global research on female-headed household vulnerability.

Drawing from 94 studies across multiple regions, this conversation challenges common assumptions. Vulnerability is not just about income—it is shaped by structural inequality, access to resources, and how institutions define and respond to women’s lives.

From displacement to rural isolation, from financial exclusion to climate shocks, the discussion reveals how layered and interconnected these realities are.

What You’ll Learn

* What “female-headed household” actually means across contexts

* Why vulnerability goes beyond poverty and income

* How structural inequalities shape women’s access to resources

* The limits of data and why lived experiences are often missing

* What governments, NGOs, and communities can do differently

Key Insight

Female-headed households are not inherently vulnerable.Vulnerability emerges from systems that fail to support them.

Why This Matters

As the number of female-headed households grows globally—due to conflict, migration, and economic change—how we define and measure vulnerability directly impacts who receives support.

This conversation asks a deeper question:Are we measuring women’s realities—or simplifying them?

This webinar is part of the Refugee Archive Roundtable, a live series bringing together scholars whose research helps us better understand issues affecting female-headed households and displaced single mothers worldwide.

In this Refugee Archive Roundtable webinar, host Aboderin (Oluwatimilehin) Enoch speaks with Rita Trias-Prats, PhD Candidate at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, and Dr. Albert Esteve, Director of the Center for Demographic Studies, about their research on the global rise of female-headed households across 60 years and 156 countries.

The discussion explores whether the increase in women reported as “heads of household” reflects a genuine shift in family power structures or changes in how institutions collect and define household data. The conversation examines the distinction between statistical representation and lived realities inside the home.

Rita and Dr. Esteve reflect on how census practices have evolved toward more gender-neutral reporting, and how this shift can sometimes obscure deeper questions about authority, decision-making, and economic control within households.

The conversation also touches on:

* How the concept of “gender symmetry” is reshaping household classifications in global data

* The difference between institutional reporting changes and actual shifts in household power dynamics

* Regional variations in reporting, including contrasts between Southern Africa, North Africa, and parts of Asia

* Research findings on child outcomes in female-headed households across Africa and Latin America

This webinar is part of the Refugee Archive Roundtable, a live series bringing together scholars whose research helps us better understand issues affecting female-headed households and displaced single mothers worldwide.