ABSTRACT
Female-headed households are a new phenomenon in the rural society of Bangladesh. Households headed by women are overwhelmingly poor and landless or nearly landless, and female heads are usually illiterate. Poverty is the single most dominant characteristic of the rural female-headed households. Out of the 62 female-headed households, 56 are landless or near landless and 38 are totally landless. On assumption of the new role, the female heads had to immediately tackle the need to provide the basic necessities of life; and the overwhelming majority of them responded by directly taking up income-earning employment. One basic difference between the male-headed households and the female-headed households is that the male head has both ownership and control of the household property, i.e. the land and homestead. The sons and daughters in a female-headed household start working at a much earlier age to relieve the hard-pressed female head.
