Women on average were already in a more precarious economic position than men, and they appear to be taking much of the housing crisis hit.

Sales and prices are down. Foreclosures have spiked in Georgia and across the nation.

No one yet has a breakdown of the damage by gender. But studies show that women accounted for more than their share of the risky loans at the crest of the lending and buying boom.

"Women are disproportionately impacted by the fallout from the housing crisis," said Avis Jones-DeWeever, an affiliated scholar with the Institute for Women's Policy Research.

"People are losing their homes, or they are on the cusp of losing their homes," said Jones-DeWeever, in Atlanta for a three-day conference on economic justice that began Friday.

During years of spectacular sales that ended in 2006, home prices in much of the country leaped by double digits annually.

In Georgia, where builders were adding more than 50,000 homes a year to the market, prices rose less sensationally, but still steadily.

Homeowners took enormous amounts of money from their homes by cashing out equity — while assuming that their home value would keep rising.

When the bubble burst, many homeowners found themselves owing more on their mortgage than the house as worth.

They couldn't refinance. They couldn't get cash for equity.

Worse, many faced higher rates or other financial trouble and couldn't make their monthly payments.

For women, who tend to have less income and wealth as a cushion, that adds up to danger, Jones-DeWeever said. "Women are more likely to fall into a financial crisis and when they are in crisis, it's harder to get out."

Women on average tend to be financial losers after divorce. Those who are left with children and the house find themselves more likely to have trouble making mortgage payments.

Many thousands of single women in recent years have been homebuyers in their own names. They have, on average, less income than single men, but they take greater financial risks, according to a study by Rachel Drew, research analyst at the Joint Center on Housing at Harvard University.

"They tend to buy smaller homes and condos, but they tend to stretch their incomes to do so," she said.

About 43 percent of single women were using more than 30 percent of their income each month on housing payments, she said. Just 30 percent of unmarried men and 25 percent of married couples were spending more than 30 percent.

Moreover, a disproportionate number of the women received risky loans, said economist Eileen Appelbaum of Rutgers University. "Women at every income level are a lot more likely than men to end up with subprime mortgages."

In 2005, just before the housing boom crested, women received 37 percent of the higher-cost home loans known as subprime, and just 28 percent of the prime loans, according to the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, a nonprofit community development organization.

Subprime loans, originally intended for borrowers with checkered credit histories, are especially risky when given to homeowners with modest incomes.

That arrangement can leave the borrower just one layoff or illness away from financial disaster.

Raising the odds further, many loans were written with rates that climbed after a "teaser" period of a year, two or three. Roughly one of every five subprime loans will end up in foreclosure, according to the Center for Responsible Lending, a consumer advocacy group.

Women overall were 32 percent more likely to receive a subprime mortgage than men, according to a report by the Consumer Federation of America.

Yet the higher-risk loans were not limited to lower-income women, either: "Disparity between men and women increases as incomes rise," according to the CFA report.

In 2005, about one-third of women homebuyers took mortgages with interest rates of more than 7.66 percent — at a time when the average prime mortgage rate was 5.87 percent, according to the CFA.

Just one-quarter of men took rates at that higher level. As many of the loans go bad, much of the damage may be concentrated in the black community, said Jones-DeWeever.

"In the black community, half of home purchases are black women," she said. "And a disproportionate number of them are single mothers."