The Growing Visibility of the ‘Unaccommodated Woman’
Homelessness is the greatest manifestation of poverty and injustice in the economically developed world. A 2015 review of the state of housing exclusion in Europe reported that while evidence was variable, signs of increased homelessness were present almost everywhere, with only some Scandinavian countries reporting low levels or falling rates (Domergue et al. 2015). Another recent comparative European study has added to existing evidence about the interrelationships between poverty and housing insecurity, while investigating the links between homelessness and eviction. Kenna et al. (2016) found the link between evictions and homelessness to be clearly related to the availability of support and resources, namely personal, social and financial, as well as available options for rapid rehousing. Inadequate welfare protection systems can exacerbate this predicament, particularly for vulnerable people, and for those with weak or no functional family ties (Kenna et al. 2016).
Historically, there has been recognition that women’s experiences of homelessness differ from those of men and that there can be an important gender dimension to the problem of homelessness (Edgar and Doherty 2001; Watson and Austerberry 1986). However, there is a paucity of research on women’s homelessness throughout Europe and the literature has only recently begun to include women’s experiences (Baptista 2010; Mayock and Sheridan 2012; Moss and Singh 2015). While the ‘invisibility’ of homeless women, within both popular and academic portrayals of homelessness, has been recognized for some time (May et al. 2007; Wardhaugh 1999; Watson 1999) very little robust research has specifically focused on women. Women’s homelessness, according to Wardhaugh (1999), has remained largely invisible because of the particular stigma attached to the ‘unaccommodated woman’. This stigma centres on perceptions of displacement from an acceptable role as a woman within European and Western cultural norms. A woman who is not a wife, mother or carer, regardless of her other characteristics, represents a form of deviance, even if she may be simultaneously viewed as a victim and in need (Wardhaugh 1999; see Chap. 3, this volume). Homeless women therefore ‘disappear’ into the institutional spaces of homeless hostels and frequently rely on precarious arrangements with acquaintances, friends or family to keep a roof over their head (Pleace et al. 2008; Shinn et al. 1998); preferring to hide themselves from public view, they only rarely move into the public spaces of street homelessness (Wardhaugh 1999).
Women’s homelessness encompasses other extreme forms of poverty, particularly child poverty, largely because much of what we talk about when we discuss women’s homelessness is lone female parents with dependent children. Edgar and Doherty (2001) provided an important contribution to the enhancement of an understanding of the characteristics and experiences of women facing homelessness in Europe, adopting a country by country approach. This work broke new ground in that it was the first book to specifically examine female homelessness across Europe. It highlighted how the gender dimensions of homelessness were neglected throughout Europe, particularly the experiences of women facing homelessness. As homeless women were less visible than men sleeping rough or using emergency accommodation, they were simply assumed to be a minor social problem, rather than actually being investigated.
The Need to Build a European Evidence Base on Women’s Homelessness
This collection aims to build upon earlier research, adopting a comparative pan-European approach. The goal of the volume is to make a critical contribution in terms of assessing and extending the knowledge base on women’s homelessness. This book is the result of the first international collaboration between leading homelessness researchers who have cooperated through the work of the Women’s Homelessness in Europe Network (WHEN) to produce a comparative analysis of women’s homelessness across Europe. WHEN, which was founded in 2012 (www.womenshomelessness.org) and currently has a membership of 16 academics from 12 European countries, was established to enhance understanding of issues at the core of women’s homelessness and foster international collaborative research on gender dimensions of homelessness.1
European policy debates about homelessness, particularly in more recent years, are more likely to acknowledge that homelessness among women is a distinct and separate issue. An increased interest in women’s homelessness is evident in national and pan-European responses to homelessness. The European Parliament resolution of 14 April 2016, on meeting the antipoverty target in light of increasing household costs, directly addressed the issue of homelessness among women. The resolution called on the need for more research in this field and on action to be taken by the European Commission, the European Institute for Gender Inequality and its Member States:
[The European Parliament] Calls on the Commission, the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE), and the Member States to undertake research into female homelessness and its causes and drivers, as the phenomenon is captured inadequately in current data; notes that gender-specific elements that ought to be taken into account include gender-based economic dependency, temporary housing, or avoidance of social services. (European Parliament 2016, Key Recommendation 39)
FEANTSA, the European Federation of National Organisations working with homeless people, has called for the specific needs of homeless women at risk of domestic and gender-based violence to be integrated into strategic responses to gender-based violence, noting that:
Women who are homeless have a number of severe, interrelated and exceptionally complex problems which contribute to their homelessness and make recovery a challenge. The experience of homelessness can carry different implications across the gender spectrum. This is why homelessness strategies must explicitly make room for women’s homelessness. There is already a considerable body of existing evidence around gender perspectives on homelessness and how they can critically influence policy and help to ensure that services work appropriately and effectively to meet the needs of homeless women. (FEANTSA 2015, p. 5)
Echoing these calls for greater and explicit attention to women’s homelessness, a recent review of the Finnish homelessness strategy, which is increasingly regarded as setting the standard for a coordinated and comprehensive strategy for preventing homelessness, concluded:
Homelessness among women is clearly an issue in Finland, women are represented in the homeless and long-term homeless populations and experiencing all the potentially harmful effects of homelessness. Ensuring that this social problem is accurately mapped and understood, which may mean using specific methodologies for understanding women’s homelessness and also ensuring that homelessness services exist that cater effectively for women’s needs, lies at the heart of ensuring that this dimension of homelessness is fully addressed. (Pleace et al. 2015, pp. 70–71)
The exact extent of women’s homelessness across Europe is not known but there are almost universal reports of relative increases in the proportion of women using homelessness services and living rough. The degree to which there is undercounting of homeless women living in precarious, inadequate and sometimes unsafe temporary arrangements with acquaintances, friends and relatives is only beginning to become apparent as homelessness research starts to look in more detail at women’s experiences.
Available data, while showing upward trends, are primarily based on the most visible forms of homelessness—that is, individuals who are rough sleeping and those residing in homelessness hostel accommodation. Variations in definition and in measurement techniques produce marked differences in levels, which may be generated by methodological inconsistencies and shortfalls, alongside any substantive differences in the number or demographics of those who are homeless. A 2014 review of the extent and quality of statistical knowledge on homelessness across 15 EU Member States reported that 12 per cent to 38 per cent of homelessness was being experienced by women, but again raised serious questions about the quality and comparability of current data (Busch-Geertsema et al. 2014). Challenges exist, but the indications are clearly that women’s homelessness—even when enumeration is restricted to metrics that fail to account for hidden or concealed homelessness and has other flaws related to an over-reliance on point-in-time methodology—is rising across Europe (Baptista et al. 2012; Busch-Geertsema et al. 2014).
The task of improving data is part of the bigger set of challenges that this book seeks to explore. Addressing the inadequacies of the enumeration of homeless women is the point at which new and better research needs to start in gaining a fuller understanding of this social problem. As the contributions to this book demonstrate, women are under-represented in homelessness statistics and the gender dimensions of homelessness are generally under-researched. Homeless women are often not separately enumerated, including the numbers of women present in concealed households (Pleace and Bretherton 2013). As discussed throughout this collection, women’s homelessness is typified by this ‘concealment’ and that is a challenge for effective enumeration and social scientific research. This volume highlights the gaps in evidence and methodological challenges that need to be addressed, and the need to recognize this social problem and seek to better understand it could hardly be clearer.
About the Book
This book does not aim to provide a comprehensive guide to each and every country in Europe on the topic of women’s homelessness. Rather, it is an edited collection that attempts to resolve the limitations of country-specific accounts of women’s homelessness by providing a collection that is grounded in comparative analyses that are conversant with the available empirical research. The collection examines the nature and meaning of women’s homelessness, relying on a multidisciplinary, comparative approach, and examines several of its most significant dimensions, including: domestic violence, motherhood, family homelessness, health, long-term (recurrent and sustained) homelessness, and the specific situations and experiences of migrant women.
The book asks critical questions about the current state of knowledge on the lives and situations of homeless women throughout Europe. There are discussions of the methodological traditions within the existing literature and the images used in discourses on homeless women. The book explores the extent to which these images and discourses reflect the reality of the lives of homeless women and how women’s homelessness is ‘managed’ strategically by governments and by policy communities across Europe.
Comparative research at a European level allows new insights into how wider socio-political, economic and cultural contexts impact on women’s homelessness. Different cultural attitudes to female roles, variations in opportunities, economic conditions, education and welfare systems all potentially influence the extent to which the experience of homelessness can be differentiated by gender. Perhaps most importantly, ‘comparative analyses can make visible taken-for-granted assumptions and underlying ideologies; reveal the arbitrariness of particular categorisations and concepts; and suggest new innovative solutions’ (Salway et al. 2011, p. 2).
There are also challenges associated with cross-national comparison, irrespective of the topic or ‘problem’ chosen for detailed analysis. In relation to homelessness specifically, European countries subscribe to different definitions and the measurement of homelessness is notoriously fraught (Busch-Geertsema 2010). Nonetheless, such empirical challenges present opportunities as well as risks. The limitations in current data also reflect broader ambivalences and/or a failure on the part of academic and policy communities to engage with the multitude of pressing issues facing some of the most marginalized women in societies across Europe. This collection embraces this challenge and, in so doing, aims to promote critical, social and scientific cross-national perspectives on several key dimensions of women’s homelessness. Throughout Europe the experiences and circumstances of women have received far less attention within homelessness research compared to those of men, and this book represents an attempt to correct that situation.
The bulk of the evidence presented in this book is based on research conducted in countries from across the EU. European research and data on women’s homelessness are, however, often limited and, for this reason, the authors also draw upon knowledge and evidence from further afield, particularly from the extensive evidence bank available in the...