Títol.- Gender and living arrangements in global perspective: three essays on household structures, female headship, and family transitions

Online:

Direcció: Albert Esteve; Ginevra Floridi

Tribunal:

• Presidenta: Brienna Perelli-Harris (University of Southampton, UK)
•  Secretari: Diederik Boertien (CED)
•  Vocal: Maria José González (Universitat Pompeu Fabra)

• Suplent: Jenny Olofsson (Centre for Demographic and Aging Research-CEDAR, Umeå University, Suècia)
• Suplent: Clara Cortina (Universitat Pompeu Fabra)

Abstract

Gender fundamentally structures who people live with across societies, over the life course, and among social groups. This thesis examines how gender shapes living arrangements from a comparative perspective, tracing gender differences in household composition at the global level, the rise of female headship over six decades across more than 150 countries, and the diversity of young women’s living arrangement trajectories in Mexico. The first chapter introduces the three empirical chapters, defines the core concepts, situates the thesis within theoretical perspectives in gender and family demography, and reviews the literature on gendered living arrangements, female-headed households, and women’s household trajectories during the transition to adulthood. The second chapter examines gender differences in living arrangements across three life stages, early adulthood, midlife, and later life, in 107 countries and major world regions, identifying the living arrangements that account for these differences and their association with union formation and dissolution. The third chapter adopts a household perspective to examine trends in female-headed households across 153 countries from the 1960s to the 2020s. The fourth chapter takes a life course perspective to investigate the heterogeneity and social stratification of young women’s living arrangement trajectories in Mexico among cohorts born between 1962 and 1987, showing that family transitions take place within diverse living arrangements. The fifth chapter summarizes the main findings, interprets them through theoretical frameworks in gender and family demography, acknowledges the thesis’ limitations, and outlines directions for future research. The findings show that women’s and men’s living arrangements diverge substantially over the life course, reflecting gendered differences in the timing of union formation, exposure to dissolution, and rates of re-partnering. They also demonstrate that assigning household headship remains a deeply gendered practice despite considerable cross-national variation in the prevalence in female headship. Finally, the results reveal that young women’s residential trajectories in Mexico are markedly stratified by social origin. Together, these findings provide a comparative account of how gender structures living arrangements across different contexts and stages of life, contributing to a broader understanding of gender, households, and family organization at both global and national scales.

Keywords: Global, Gender, Living Arrangements, Households, Families