Zwane, Sithembiso Samuel.Dlamini, Nokukhanya Viera.2025-11-262025-11-2620252025https://hdl.handle.net/10413/24169Masters Degree. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg.Economy is a cross-cutting concern for Africa and South Africa in particular. The ongoing economic instability predominantly impacts women, who make up a substantial portion of South Africa's population. Economic disproportion cause breakages in families, which increase the rate of women-headed households that fail to sustain their households. Report by Statistics SA (2022/2023) highlights a remarkable increase of women-headed families in South Africa. Household economy is the critical factor in determining how livelihoods and countries are sustained and progress. The researcher intends to investigate and analyse the intersections of gender, economy, and theology, focusing on the experiences of women heading households. Evidence is scarce on how women-headed households in developing and emerging economies like South Africa sustain their livelihoods. Experiences of women heading households are the core of the study whereby theological lenses are incorporated to learn and unlearn oppressive and gendered notions in economic narratives. Foundational theories for the study are intersectionality theory and theologies of survival. Underpinnings of selected theories embrace different intersectional elements, including structural, political, and representational perspectives. Theologies of survival explore platforms of resilience currently operational in theological spaces. This study followed a qualitative approach to gain comprehensive understanding of social phenomena in people’s natural environments and to comprehend how individuals perceive their surroundings, relying on direct experiences of the people. The desktop approach to gain comprehensive understanding of social phenomena is through obtaining exhaustive data from literature using the case study method. The purposive method of sampling has been selected to collect verified data about the key population and analysed through thematic analysis tool. Women-headed households are multifaceted by various factors expressed by both social and theological constructs embedded in patriarchy. The composition of women-headed households is a wide concept and household headship is highly contested. Scriptures hold true reflection of God’s view in terms of economic justice. Theology of resilience in feminist perspective is concluded as the response to structural systems formed against the liberation of women’s economic status. The narrative of Zelophehad’s daughters provides fundamental principles of the theology of resilience. In this account, all families were represented by male figures except Zelophehad’s household, which was women-headed. Zelophehad’s daughters challenged the marginalization of women-headed households. They resisted dominant patriarchal systems that controlled access to economic resources, which was land in their case. They voiced out for their economic right to access land even though they had no male representative in their family. Nevertheless, they challenged the strong and influential Jewish culture of their time. Resilience became their theology of survival. As a result, the theology of resilience is recommended as a tool of response to the concept of the women-headed household economy.enCC0 1.0 Universalhttp://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/Women headed.Household economy.Theology.KwaNxamalala.Development.Thesis