Every March we pause to talk about women: we celebrate International Women’s Day, reflect on progress, and discuss equality in politics, work, and society. It is a moment filled with panels, campaigns, and well-intentioned messages about women’s rights and achievements. But this annual conversation rarely asks a simple, yet profoundly important question: which women are we actually talking about?
Across Europe, one group of women remains largely absent from these discussions, even though their experiences reveal some of the deepest inequalities in our societies: single mothers. Today, roughly 14% of all households with children in the European Union—around 7.8 million families—are single-parent households. In more than four out of five of these households, the parent raising the children is a woman. In other words, when we talk about women’s economic security, employment, and social protection, we are inevitably talking about single mothers as well.
The numbers tell a much less celebratory story. Across the European Union, nearly half of single-parent households—around 47%—are at risk of poverty or social exclusion, placing them among the most economically vulnerable families in Europe. Their incomes are typically lower than those of two-parent households, and financial strain often spills over into other aspects of life: less stable housing, fewer opportunities, and a constant balancing act between work and care. Yet the systems shaping everyday life—from labour markets to social policies—still operate on an assumption that is quietly outdated: that family responsibilities are shared between two adults. For millions of women raising children alone, that assumption simply does not match reality.
For single mothers, everyday life follows a different logic. Paid work has to be organised around school schedules, childcare gaps, unexpected illness, and the constant emotional work that comes with raising children alone. Careers, however, are still structured around flexibility, mobility, and uninterrupted time—resources that become scarce when the entire responsibility for family life rests on one person. This reveals a deeper structural mismatch. Modern economies reward linear career paths and continuous availability, while care responsibilities remain unevenly distributed and largely invisible in economic systems. The result is not simply personal strain but a structural disadvantage that shapes income, stability, and long-term opportunities. These pressures also have important implications for health. Studies consistently show that single mothers report higher levels of stress, fatigue, and poorer self-rated health compared to women living in two-parent households. When health is affected, it further limits women’s ability to participate in work, education, and training opportunities, reinforcing the cycle of economic and social vulnerability.
Single motherhood therefore makes visible a contradiction at the heart of many contemporary societies. We speak confidently about women’s empowerment, yet the institutions organising work, education, and social protection still struggle to accommodate the realities of those carrying the greatest share of care. And this is far from a marginal phenomenon. Across the European Union, single-parent households have become steadily more common, increasing from around 12% of families with children in 2009 to roughly 14% a decade later. In some countries the proportion is much higher: in Estonia, for instance, more than a third of families with children are headed by a single parent. Elsewhere—particularly in parts of Southern Europe—the numbers are lower, but family life often depends more heavily on extended family networks to absorb the pressures that formal systems fail to address.
What these statistics ultimately point to is not only a demographic shift, but a deeper social question: how well do our institutions recognise the realities of families that no longer fit the traditional two-parent model? This question lies at the heart of the SHE-LEARNS project, a European initiative designed to support single mothers through more inclusive adult education. For many women raising children alone, access to education and career development is shaped by structural constraints—limited time, financial pressure, and fewer opportunities to participate in training that could strengthen their economic security.
SHE-LEARNS responds to this challenge by promoting flexible learning pathways, digital and financial literacy, and career development support, while also equipping adult educators with tools to better understand the complex realities these women navigate. The ambition is not simply to provide training, but to rethink how education systems can become more accessible to those whose lives do not follow conventional trajectories.
Because if equality is meant to be more than a symbolic gesture once a year, it must address the structures that shape women’s everyday lives. March may invite us to celebrate women’s achievements. But it should also remind us to look more closely at the inequalities that remain—often quietly embedded in the realities of families that rarely enter public debate.
Single mothers are not a footnote in the story of gender equality. They are one of its most revealing chapters.
Ana Pavlič
Programme Director at Gender Equality Research Institute (IPES), Slovenia