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Globally, we are undercounting how many single mothers there are - and it is hugely problematic

December 21, 2020
woman carrying baby on back
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
UN Women

Originally was written by Antra Bhatt and originally published by the UN Women on February 11, 2020.

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development emphasizes the principle of 'leaving no one behind'. But by not counting lone mothers in official data, they are being left behind. In Nigeria, 27-year-old widow and single mother of four, Bage Jidda, watched her husband get slaughtered, then spent three years as a hostage of Boko Haram before being rescued and moved to a refugee camp.

Despite her trauma, through a UN Women-supported programme, she learned tailoring skills and became economically independent. She now rents a small home, but her situation remains precarious, as she has no savings or access to social protection.

Bage is not alone.

Globally, there are more than 100 million mothers like her, single-handedly raising their children. According to Progress of the World's Women 2019-2020, many are in their prime working years, aged 25-54, and must somehow manage a full day of work to provide for their children. A smaller number of lone/single mothers are younger than 25 (3.4 per cent), which translates into 3.8 million extremely vulnerable young women—127,000 of whom are estimated to be under 18 and living alone with their young children.

Often, these adolescent mothers face multiple and intersecting inequalities.

Numerous others are unable to earn money or access wealth/assets and must live with other relatives in extended households where they are at the mercy of the 'purse-holder'. In India, 13 million households are headed by lone mothers who live alone with their children, while another 32 million lone mothers live in extended households.

Globally, there are 101.3 million lone mothers like Bage who live alone with their children, and at least another 101.3 million women whose reality and possible vulnerability, income and/or care needs are invisible to policymakers because they are not counted by official statistics.

READ: With the will, there's a way to end violence against women

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Men's violence against women is also a pandemic – one that pre-dates the virus and will outlive it.

Let us take a brief digression to understand how data about families are collected for official sources such as household surveys.

Most household surveys are designed using the head of the household as the anchor to define all family ties, a spot which is implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) reserved for the man of the household. This gender bias means that in larger households, such as extended families, relationships between members will not be adequately captured, making it difficult to identify lone mothers.

When no adult male is present in a household, a woman with children living with other female relatives can be identified as the lone mother. But, when a lone mother is living with her in-laws and multiple other relatives, she can almost never be identified as a lone mother in an extended household.

Why does not being counted matter? When a substantial proportion of lone mothers are invisible, when countries redesign family policies, their needs are completely ignored. For instance, social policies designed with a male breadwinner and a female homemaker in mind will not effectively serve the needs of the millions of women who combine both roles, or adequately support the vast majority of those living in extended or lone-parent families.

To resolve the problem of undercounting lone mothers and other vulnerable groups, a two-pronged approach is needed. First, National Statistical Offices must disaggregate administrative and census data by age, sex and other socio-economic characteristics. This will help identify the most vulnerable individuals within households. Second, for future surveys, officials need to stop assuming that information collected about the head of a household is enough to understand the reality and welfare of all individuals in that household.

The needs of all family members need to be assessed so that laws, policies and social protection systems to support families can be designed accordingly. Only then can we be sure to leave no one behind.

UN Women is the UN organization dedicated to gender equality and women's empowerment.

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Can tech help female entrepreneurs break the bias?

Women founders continue to come up against common challenges and biases
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Written by Kelly Devine, Division President UK & Ireland, Mastercard

Starting a business may have historically been perceived as a man’s game, but this couldn’t be further from reality. Research shows women are actually more likely than men to actively choose to start their own business – often motivated by the desire to be their own boss or to have a better work-life balance and spend more time with their family.

The recently published Mastercard Index of Women Entrepreneurship 2021 found that in the category of 'Aspiration Driven Entrepreneurship’ – capturing those who actively choose to start their own business – women in the UK surpass men: 60% vs 56%. And Mastercard research from February 2022 found 10% of female business owners started their business in the past two years compared to 6% of men – meaning women were 67% more likely to have started a business during the pandemic.

Yet, there are common challenges that women founders continue to come up against - not least the gender imbalance in the household and long-held biases which are still prevalent.

In the UK, women are almost three times more likely to be balancing care and home commitments than men, and this was exacerbated during the pandemic as the additional barriers of school closures and lockdowns meant that the care time of dependents rose significantly on a day-to-day level for women. In addition, women were less likely to have access to a home office, greatly impacting the work they were able to accomplish when working from home was the only option.

It's also widely known that female business owners are still more likely to struggle to access funding for their business ideas. According to Dealroom, all-women founding teams received just 1.4% of the €23.7bn invested into UK start-ups in 2021, while all-male leadership teams have taken almost 90% of the available capital.

Without financial support, and when juggling significant time pressures both at home and at work, how can women grow their companies and #BreaktheBias (as this year’s International Women’s Day termed it)? What tools or support can save them time and money, and give them the headspace they need to focus on building their business?

With female owned businesses collectively estimating revenue growth of £120 billion over the next five years, solving this problem is bigger than supporting women – it’s about supporting the national economy.

Using tech to level the playing field

There are clearly societal issues at play that need to be resolved. But when we look at the rise in technology businesses during the pandemic, we can plainly see an alternative source of support critical for business growth: digital tools.

A third of female business owners say new technologies will be crucial to the success of their business in the future and one in five say it is the most important thing for business growth.

With new technology comes new ways to pay, create, and work. And yet there are barriers that prevent business owners accessing this technology. Women are significantly more likely to say they want to use more digital tools but don’t know what is best for their business and also more concerned about the security of digital tools.

When technology is adopted by businesses – whether using online accounting solutions or messenger services for communicating with staff – it saves them time, allows them to maintain and grow their customer base, and ultimately increases cost savings and profit.

By drastically improving the training and support that is available to women-owned business to access and utilise technology we will allow these businesses to grow and succeed. And we know there is demand for it.

Research done by the IFC and Dalberg shows that female entrepreneurs are more likely to invest time and money in business development. This includes product development, customer base expansion, and digital tools and training and there are plenty of services available offering this type of support – many of them for free.

One such programme is Strive UK – an initiative of the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth – which aims to reach 650,000 micro and small business owners across the UK and empower them with the tools they need to thrive in the digital economy through free guidance, helpful tools and one-to-one mentoring.

Working together with small business experts – Enterprise Nation, Be the Business and Digital Boost – we hope to ensure hundreds of thousands of UK female business owners have the tools they need to succeed and reach their ambitious goals. Because this ambition remains strong in the UK, with female business owners largely optimistic about the future despite the multitude of challenges they are facing. Four in ten say they will grow their business in the next five years – compared to only a third of male business owners – and they’re also 35% less likely than men to say they plan to downsize or close the business.

But if we do not empower female entrepreneurs to access the tools and technology they need to grow, there is a risk this optimism could be misplaced. Support programmes that provide business owners with guidance and mentorship can help ensure this isn’t the case, allowing female entrepreneurs to not only survive but thrive in the months and years ahead.