Should humanitarian assistance prioritise households headed by women? Are such households at a disadvantage in all dimensions of vulnerability? What are the specific gendered forms of disadvantage faced by female-headed households?

A paper from the University of East Anglia’s School of Development Studies draws on data from Iraqi Kurdistan to contest the rhetoric-fuelled stereotype that households headed by women are at a disadvantage in every dimension of vulnerability. The findings challenge the logic of one of the world’s longest-running relief operations.

Research was undertaken in collectives - artificial communities created by Saddam Hussein to resettle populations in the aftermath of the destruction of Kurdish villages in the 1980s. The already high number of widows was further increased by reprisals when the Kurds rose in rebellion after the Gulf War. As a result of these brutal events (and cultural prohibitions on remarriage) the collectives in the governorate of Suleimaniyah now have one of the highest proportions of female-headed households in the world at around 18 percent.

The research set out to test the assumptions behind the fashionable, ‘feminisation of poverty’ argument that vulnerable female-headed households are disproportionately represented in poor sections of society. The populations of the collectives may be atypical - displaced peasantry, very few now owning land and significantly dependent on food handouts from the UN food-for-oil programme – but the findings are, nevertheless, salutary.

While the value of household possessions is significantly lower in female-headed households this is not the only measure of their well being. The value of female-headed households’ land and livestock is considerably greater than that of male-run households. Members of male-headed households are more vulnerable in income terms than members of female-headed households. Women have greater autonomy to work for wages than their counterparts in more traditional male-run households.

The study highlights the limitations of seeing vulnerability only through the lens of material assets and urges recognition of the relational nature of existence or ‘social capital’. In the collectives female-headed households may appear to be more vulnerable and unable to access as much social capital, yet this means they are significantly less vulnerable in terms of debt repayment.

Other points made by the study include:

• The simplistic ‘hand-out oriented’ programme (funded from Iraqi petrol sales, but run by the UN), particularly the distribution of additional supplements to those deemed most needy, reflects the power of the ‘feminisation of poverty’ paradigm.
• Although data collected at the household level is often desirable on a practical level, the notion of 'household well-being' is itself composite in nature and attention must therefore also be paid to intra-household distributive mechanisms that determine individuals' well-being.

Among the globally applicable policy implications are:

• Blind targeting of female-headed households is inappropriate.
• The need for a more subtle gendered understanding of vulnerability to better recognise the needs and interests of both female and male-headed households.

Source(s):
‘How is household vulnerability gendered? Female-headed households in the collective of Suleimaniyah, Iraqi Kurdistan’, Disasters 24(2) by Louise Waite Full document.

id21 Research Highlight: 10 September 2001

Further Information:
Louise Waites
School for Development Studies
University of East Anglia
Norwich NR4 7TJ
UK

Tel: +44 (0)1603 592807
Fax: +44 (0) 1603 451999
Contact the contributor: l.waite@uea.ac.uk

School of Development Studies, UEA, UK

Other related links:
'The lure of the French bean: what’s in it for women?'

'Breadwinners and homemakers? Children explore gender'

'Victims or partners? Working with women to rebuild the Balkans'

Women feed the World from Future Harvest

Visit the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

Also refer to the WHO Division of Emergency and Humanitarian Action