(RECAP: The news and research about women and money can be dreary. Women earn less than their male counterparts, pay harsher workplace penalties for pursuing parenthood, struggle more with debt, and save less for retirement. But there’s one area of personal finance where single women are outpacing men in the U.S., and it’s a significant one: home ownership. Although women have been ahead of men in NAR’s data since 1981, the gap has widened even further in recent years. Property values and mortgage lending imploded after the 2008 financial crisis, and low interest rates have made lending more appealing to new, more frugal buyers. Single women are also likelier than single men to be parenting on their own, and therefore likelier to seek stable housing for raising children. There were 8.6 million single-mother households in 2011, more than three times the 2.6 million single-father households, according to the Pew Research Center.)

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