This book marks a critical contribution in assessing and extending the evidence base on the causes and consequences of women’s homelessness. Drawing together work from Europe’s leading homelessness scholars, it presents a multidisciplinary and comparative analysis of this acute social problem, including its relationship with domestic violence, lone parenthood, motherhood, health and well-being and women’s experience of sustained and recurrent homelessness. Working from diverse perspectives, the authors look at the responses to women’s homelessness in differing cultures and regions, and within various forms of welfare states. They focus in particular on relating the gender dimensions of welfare and social policy to women’s experiences when they become homeless. This innovative and timely edited volume will appeal to students and scholars of sociology, social policy, anthropology, and gender and women’s studies, along with international policy-makers.
This unique volume provides, for the first time, a picture of the nature and causes of homelessness among women across the European member states. Its findings will stimulate further research and encourage transnational cooperation in the development of appropriate policies and support services.Women and homelessness in Europe:considers the gender-specific issues contributing towards homelessness among women in Europe;assesses the contribution of economic and social change to the risk of homelessness;examines the changing composition of the female homeless population;describes the pattern and evaluates the effectiveness of service provision available to homeless women;explores the experiences of homeless women using these services.
Women’s rough sleeping is a major issue across Europe and is especially problematic within the current economic climate. Based on a European Union DAPHNE III-funded project, this important book tells the story of the women and organisations that took part in the study. Revealing a number of truths about women’s rough sleeping across Europe, the authors argue that there is little or no specific provision for this vulnerable and hard to reach group. The book focuses on the adoption of effective policy, strategies and services to meet the needs of homeless women, specifically women rough sleepers who are the victims of domestic abuse. It will be a valuable resource for academics and students of criminology, social policy, law, social work and probation, as well as housing/homelessness practitioners, policy makers, local authorities and NGOs.
The authors reveal a number of truths about women's rough sleeping across Europe and argue for the adoption of effective policy, strategies and services to meet the needs of homeless women and the specific problem of women rough sleepers who are the victims of domestic abuse.
This oral history collection brings together extended interviews with fifteen women, illuminating the part that gender roles play in ensnaring women in cycles of domestic abuse and homelessness and highlighting the physical stresses. It also challenges liberal myths about homeless people, and homeless women in particular.
The homeless person is thought to be different. Whereas we get to determine our difference or sameness, the homeless person’s difference is imposed upon them and assumed to be known because of their homelessness. Exclusion from housing – either a commodity that should be accessed from the market or social provision – signifies the homeless person’s incapacities and failure to function in what are presented as unproblematic social systems. Drawing on a program of research spanning ten years, this book provides an empirically grounded account of the lives and identities of people who are homeless. It illustrates that people with chronic experiences of homelessness have relatively predictable biographies characterised by exclusion, poverty, and trauma from early in life. Early experiences of exclusion continue to pervade the lives of people who are homeless in adulthood, yet they identify with family and normative values as a means of imaging aspirational futures.
To date, no published research has focused on women's homelessness within the comparative housing context. This thesis bridges that gap. In doing so, the thesis fuses the three theoretical frameworks of welfare theory, comparative analysis and feminism and social policy to reveal the similarities and differences between the "homelessness systems" of England, Ireland and France and how these systems respond to homeless women. The thesis demonstrates the value of using welfare typologies to ground comparative research but also shows how dominant welfare theory is inherently gender blind by its over reliance on the dichotomies of the state and the market. The thesis shows how welfare regime theory places an undue emphasis on paid employment to the detriment of women's unpaid labour as carers of children thereby reinforcing the gender stereotypes on which welfare typologies depend. By using Leeds, Cork and Lyon as instrumental case study cities, the thesis reviews the nature of each country's distinct welfare approach within a feminist review of welfare theory in England, Ireland and France. The institutional risk to homelessness for women in each case study country is assessed by focusing on four interrelated variables which have consistently been identified as causing and perpetuating homelessness amongst women. In assessing the institutional risk, reference is made to notions of modern risk society. The four variables selected for the analysis were: domestic violence; relationship breakdown; poverty and being a household type of a single parent family. Analysis of primary data from homelessness professionals in each case study city revealed that whilst being a single parent family was most frequently identified by respondents as a primary trigger to homelessness in women in the three case study cities, this institutional risk was substantially reduced in Lyon. The research has also shown significant variations between countries in respect of the relative risk posed by poverty, domestic violence and relationship breakdown and the thesis relates these differences to key debates surrounding welfare regime theory and feminism. The thesis highlights women's over reliance on state sponsored solutions to homelessness both at the point of housing crisis and in the longer term, despite the variation in homelessness systems, the nature and level of "social" housing stock and the relative ideological commitment towards homeownership in each country.
Homelessness has been recognized as a serious problem in Japan since the 1990s, but the dominant model of a "homeless person" has been that of an unemployed male laborer - a model that has largely excluded women, who experience homelessness in different forms. This study gives the homeless women of Japan a voice at last. Based on extensive fieldwork, the author paints a vivid picture of the unique experiences of homeless women living in a diverse range of environments. By introducing a gender perspective to the analytic framework and challenging the conception of the homeless individual as a rational, autonomous subject, the author invites a critical reconsideration of homeless studies and of public policy.
