Suggestions for further research

The study has left numerous questions unanswered and further research is required in a number of areas.

1. Further work is required to determine a more appropriate means of classifying households within the region in a maner that reflects the complexities of gender. Comparative studies with other regions would provide a good basis for the development of an analytical framework that could be applied on an international basis.

2. Further work is required on the relative benefits of food and shelter subsidies to low-income, female-headed households. A particular emphasis should be placed on determining the degree to which such subsidies act as short-term palliatives or provide a strategic means of escaping the chronic poverty trap that many women find themselves in.

3. The relationship between the shelter movements of female heads of household and their reproductive patterns should be explored further. The case studies carried out during this study imply that women always lose out in terms of shelter when a relationship breaks up and it would be interesting to determine if any legal remedies might be possible to cover these kind of instances when a woman's relationship with her babyfather is common law.

4. The investments that female heads of household. as compared with joint heads. make in shelter when they have access to secure land tenure should be studied to determine whether there are any gender-based differences in investment behaviour once the tenure insecurity of renting is removed.

5. Further work should be carried out to determine the impact that modern land law and current land-titling programmes are having on women's de facto access to land. Family land, which has been a largely rural tradition, provided a certain amount of security to women even if they never lived on the land concerned. This security may well be undergoing erosion as a result of current policies.