Research Synthesis of the Educational Needs of Female-Headed Households

Family female heads are one of the most vulnerable groups in the society and empowering them is essential. This research was a systematic study to design and develop a model of educational needs of female heads in the female-headed households.

This study was a qualitative applied research of a research synthetic type conducted using content-analysis and meta-analysis. The statistical population included all the relevant works published in Persian or English between 2012 and 2021 available in four reliable databases, namely, ERIC, Science Direct, PubMed and Google Scholar. Using the keywords "education of women-headed households, women's empowerment, women-headed households, and skills of women-headed households" and based on the inclusion criteria, initially 140 scientific articles were identified and finally, based on the exclusion criteria, 47 articles were selected for the final analysis. The Software MAXQDA 18 was used for the qualitative analysis of the articles.

Analysis of the data obtained showed the educational needs of women-headed households as the main theme to consist of four subthemes including "knowledge and skills of desirable sexual orientation", "knowledge and skills of raising children", "knowledge and skills of occupation" and "individual and social development and empowerment”. Based on meta-analysis out of the four main themes 22 themes were extracted and a model was designed for educating female-headed households.  

Considering that the educational needs of female-headed households have been identified, it is recommended that educational courses be designed in accordance with their educational needs.