Women head 11 per cent of Indian households

About 27 million households, constituting 11 per cent of the total households in the country, are headed by females, census data on 'female headed households' released on Friday showed.

Kerala tops the list of sates with 23 per cent households having a female as head. This finding has been revealed in the household data released on Friday by minister of state for home affairs R P N Singh.

The minister released the CD containing data on the households as part of the findings/ results of the first phase of Census 2011 on `House Listing and Housing Census'.

Inaugurating the National Data Dissemination Workshop, organised by the Registrar and Census Commission India, Singh said significant improvement has also been achieved in quality of houses but access to drinking water, electricity and sanitation are the areas where more needs to be done.

The highlights of Census 2011 include:

• About 27 million (10.9 per cent) of total households in India have female heads;
  
• About 43.7 per cent of households in Lakshadweep and 23 per cent households in Kerala have a female as head;
  
• There are about 4.9 million single-member female household heads in the country, three-fourth of them in rural areas;
  
• In seven major states - Chattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Tamilnadu, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha and Gujarat - the proportion of single member female headed household is more than 20 per cent;
  
• The proportion of male headed households has declined by 0.6 per cent in 2011 compared to 2001 while proportion of female headed households has increased by 0.5 per cent in the same period;
  
• More than 60 per cent of female headed HHs have permanent houses while in case of SC and ST categories amongst female headed households the percentage reduces to 55.8 per cent and 33.4 per cent, respectively;
  
• Around 18 per cent of female headed households have to travel more 500m in urban areas and 1km in rural areas to access drinking water;
  
• Around 48 per cent of female headed households have a latrine within the premises;
  
• Around 59 per cent of female headed households have bathing facilities within the premises;
  
• Around 45 per cent of female headed households live in one-room premises;
  
• Around 42.5 per cent of female headed households use LPG/PNG as a fuel for cooking;
  
• Around 45 per cent of female headed households have television as an asset while in case of male headed HHs, the percentage increased to 47.5 per cent;
  
• Only 3.2 per cent of female headed households have car/jeep/van while 4.8 per cent of male headed households have car/jeep/van as an asset;
  
• Around 29 per cent of female headed households do not possess any asset such as radio/ TV/ telephone / bicycle / scooter / car. However, in respect of male headed HHs, only 16.5 per cent have no assets.