Of the roughly 47,000 families in Mullaitivu District, 2,700 are run entirely by women, and records list more than 6,000 women as widows, District Secretary A. Umamaheswaran said, Daily Mirror reported.
He was speaking at an event organised by the Viluthu Foundation for Women to distribute livelihood and enterprise equipment in the district.
The number depends on how you count
The 2,700 figure rests on an official definition, and the reporting makes clear that definition is contested.
Participatory research by Viluthu into what a “woman head of household” actually means identified 11 main categories, more than 58 subcategories and over 100 further subdivisions — a spread that suggests the administrative count captures only part of the picture.
A conservative estimate puts at least 67,000 women-headed households across the Northern Province. Women and government social workers in the North and East told the researchers that if more inclusive definitions were applied, the real figure for those two provinces together could be 100,000 to 150,000.
The gap between 2,700 in one district and a possible six-figure regional total is not a discrepancy so much as a measurement problem: a widow living in an extended household, or a woman whose husband is missing rather than confirmed dead, may or may not be recorded as the head.
The economic context
Mullaitivu is among the poorest districts in Sri Lanka, with household incomes well below the national average. It was among the areas worst affected by the final phase of the civil war.
Umamaheswaran said women carry much of what economic activity there is. “Especially the women’s hard work that keeps families afloat,” he said. “Primarily MSMEs in the district are run by women and it is their innovation and determination and effort that help their families, this community and this district.”
The distribution
The Foundation worked with the District Secretariat to select recipients across all six divisional secretariat divisions, matching equipment to each woman’s existing skills. Including every division brought Tamil, Muslim and Sinhala women into the same programme.
Roughly 130 women in Mullaitivu received support, following 182 in Kilinochchi, funded by a private donor family from Singapore. The Foundation says its longer-term goal is to reach 100,000 women, and that it intends to follow the equipment with market links and mentoring.
Not reported
Daily Mirror does not say when the event was held, what equipment was distributed or its value, or how the 2,700 figure is compiled and how often it is updated. It gives no government programme or budget line attached to the district’s women-headed households, and no indication whether the official definition is under review.
The report is built around a single civil-society organisation’s event and carries no independent assessment of the estimates it cites.
