Karen Phelan remembers how scared she was when she bought her first home 10 years ago. Newly divorced and broke, she'd saved for a year for a down payment on a modest house.

"I just got tired of waiting for Mr. Right to come along and start the American dream," says Phelan, who owns her own company, which resells time-shares. Last year, she sold that house and bought a larger one in a gated golf course community in Reno.

"They're kind of like emotional trophies," says Phelan, 43. "It's symbolic of success — of getting out there and doing it on my own and saying, 'I'm just as capable of doing it as the next person and doing it on my own and making it.' "

A lot of other women seem to feel the same way. Last year, single women snapped up one of every five homes sold. That's nearly 1.5 million, if you're counting — more than twice as many as single men bought, according to the National Association of Realtors.

The trend is striking, because in 1981, the number of single women and single men home buyers was virtually the same. Since then, the percentage of buyers who are single women has almost doubled, while the percentage of single men buyers slipped 1 percentage point to 9 percent last year.

This rise of single-women homeowners is part of a greater social and economic shift that is reshaping American life.

"For the first time in history, women have access to the same resources men have always had — money, social status, power," says Donald Hantula, professor of organizational psychology at Temple University in Philadelphia. "Women can go and acquire them on their own rather than searching for a mate to provide them."

This trend is forcing changes in real estate. The building industry is beginning to add features to homes with women in mind. Mortgage lenders are doing more to help women qualify for loans.

"There have been so many advances and innovations in the market to respond to them," says Regina Lowrie, chairwoman of the Mortgage Bankers Association and the first woman to hold that post.

The large pool of unmarried individuals reduces the social weight of marriage, in economics and politics, says Stephanie Coontz, professor of history and family studies at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash.

Also, unmarried women have more money than ever.

In part, that's because more women than men are going to college.

Men have been the minority on college campuses since the 1970s, and they now make up just 44 percent of the student body. There are more women than ever on the job — 46 percent of the workforce — and the pay gap with men is closing.