Female heads of households in Zambia

In Zambia, the literature shows that there is scanty information geared particularly to this group. Most studies on Zambian women merely give a skeletal picture of these women by simply mentioning them. The literature search further indicates that no such studies have been written from a social work perspective. Therefore, the information generated from this study will be a contribution to the existing knowledge on Zambian women. The author hopes that the study will be useful to various groups of people in Zambia including women, social work practitioners and the policy makers because, (1) the research focuses for the first time on a sub-population hitherto ignored by social work scholars; (2) this study has identified "female household
heads" as an issue which needs to be tackled by the social work profession; (3) this work identifies the relationship between overall global issues such as sexism and less known problems such as female headed households; (4) this study provides change strategies that might be useful in the policy formulation by the social work profession. The data could assist policy makers in the development of policies that will affect women, and in particular, women heads of Households.
Terms which have been used in this paper will be used in the following context and defined the following way.
Female-headed households will be used interchangeably with "women heads of households". "Female heads of households" refers to those women who assume economic responsibility to support themselves and their children.