The second in a series of five handbooks designed to present and analyze statistical data on women in various regions of the world, this handbook focuses on women in 40 countries of Sub-Saharan Africa. Beginning with an overview of population characteristics in the region, the analysis continues with a description of women's literacy and education, their labor force participation, their marital status and living arrangements, their fertility, and their mortality. Information is presented not only in tables, charts, and text, but also in narrative form, offering a critique on concepts, availability, and quality of the data assembled on each variable. Findings show that except in Nigeria, the populations of Sub-Saharan African countries are not large and rural densities are not usually high. However, the population is growing rapidly, at about three percent per year. The proportion of women in the working ages is lower in the urban and higher in the rural areas than is that of men. There appear to be subregional differences in female literacy: rates tend to be higher in the Eastern and Southern regions than in West Africa, and the female disadvantage relative to males is smaller. Moreover, male labor force participation is uniformly high in the region, while female participation is lower and highly variable. Plural marriage is common in many countries of the region; in 10 of the 12 countries with data on polygamy, one-fifth to one-third of the married men had two or more wives. Appendices contain references, tables, and information on population by age, sex, and rural/urban residence. (LH)