Most of the pictures we see, or we have in our mind’s eye, concerning homeless people are images of men. A search of much of the literature reporting on homelessness show pictures of homeless men. Does this mean that more men than women experience homelessness? Or are we missing something because of the way we tend to count homelessness?
Abe Oudshoorn, an Assistant Professor at the school of Nursing at Western University notes in a Blog for the Homeless Hub, that women may experience homelessness in different ways. For instance, women are less likely to be visibly present at services for people experiencing homelessness. Some of reasons for this might be because women are more likely to have children in their care and are worried to have them apprehended, or because they want to avoid men who have harmed them, or have other safety concerns. So just counting numbers who use these services does not give us a real picture of homelessness in our city.
Other research looked at this question by tracking those who enter the emergency department in Pennsylvania. They screened 4,395 patients on housing and gender. These were people needing some kind of medical attention. They hoped to get a more realistic picture of the population who were homeless. Their findings indicated (limited as the study was), of those who were homeless, 7.4% were male, 6.8% were female, with 0.07% identifying as transgender.
This is only a small sample, but it raises some important questions for us. Where do the studies on homelessness include the experience of women, and could other data, seek better solutions to assist women who are living such a precarious life. They too need support.
Joan Atkinson, CSJ, Office for Systemic Justice, Sisters of St. Joseph in Canada