Your income pays the rent or mortgage, buys groceries, pays school expenses, and may even enable you to save for a child's education expenses or your retirement. If you don't work outside the home, you typically cook, clean, care for children, manage household finances and do dozens of other essential jobs, not to mention volunteer work. Many women will spend most of their lives as the head of the household. Women currently head 30 million households. Many will be heads of the household for most of their lives, for lots of reasons.
Some women postpone marriage or never marry.
Others are divorced or widowed. A growing number of women own their own businesses. More than 1.4 million women now own businesses with employees, and this number is expected to grow rapidly over the next ten years. Many women who own businesses are married or divorced, and many have children. More women than ever before support their aging parents.