Women
In the last decades of the 20th century, the number of women in the homeless population had increased dramatically and grown faster than the number of men. In the early 21st century, the numbers of homeless women continued to grow. In 2008 in one sample, women represented 26% of the respondents surveyed, compared to 24% in 2007.
Homeless women between the ages of 18 and 44 are between 5 and 31 times more at risk of dying than those women who have homes. Homeless women over the age of 44, however, are healthier than homeless men of the same age, and are negligibly more at risk of dying than housed women. Psychologically, however, homeless women in their fifties suffer from troubles and chronic diseases from which their housed counterparts only begin to suffer in their seventies. Despite their comparable psychological condition, elderly housing assistance is not available to these homeless women. Between 3.1 and 4.4% of homeless women in the United States are veterans of the armed services. 57% of these have availed of the Veterans Affairs' healthcare services.
Adult partner abuse, foster care, and childhood sexual abuse are all more likely to have been experienced by homeless women than by their male counterparts. Domestic violence is the direct cause of homelessness for over half of all homeless women in the United States. Approximately three quarters of the women who attempt to avail of domestic violence shelter beds are turned away in major American cities. These victims of domestic violence are often excluded from homelessness studies, despite the lack of livable conditions in their homes.
It Was a Wonderful Life, a 1993 documentary film narrated by Jodie Foster, chronicles the lives of six articulate, educated, but otherwise hidden homeless women as they struggle from day to day.
Read more about this topic: Homelessness In The United States
Famous quotes containing the word women:
“Nothing so true as what you once let fall:
‘Most women have no characters at all.’”
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744)
“If women have young children, they are one man away from welfare.”
—Gloria Steinem (b. 1934)
“It is too late in the century for women who have received the benefits of co-education in schools and colleges, and who bear their full share in the world’s work, not to care who make the laws, who expound and who administer them.”
—J. Ellen Foster (1840–1910)