2019 figures show 14% of households in Jordan led by women — SIGI

AMMAN — Fourteen per cent of households in Jordan are headed by women, Solidarity is Global Institute (SIGI) said on Tuesday.

In a statement marking the occasion of International Widows’ Day, which falls on June 23, SIGI said that 308,739 families out of 2.190 million are woman-headed, citing Department of Statistics figures for 2019.

The statement added that in 2019, the number of widows in the Kingdom totalled 252,000, at 7.9 per cent of females. The number of widowers stood at 56,000, or 1.5 per cent of males.

The statement also noted that more than 50 per cent of widows have suffered from domestic violence.

Single people aged 35 and above in Jordan included 122,000 females and 79,000 males, while there were 1.9 million married men and 1.8 million married women in 2019. 

The number of divorced men reached about 22,000, while divorced women totalled nearly 44,000.

UN figures estimate that some 258 million women globally have been widowed, with 10 per cent of them living in extreme poverty, the statement added, highlighting that the COVID-19 crisis has “worsened their situations”.  

Jordan’s 2019 population is estimated at 10.554 million people, including 5.588 million males and 4.966 million females, while the number of people older than 15 years totalled 6.929 million, including 3.729 million males and 3.2 million females.