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:
“[When asked: “Will not woman suffrage make the black woman the political equal of the white woman and does not political equality mean social equality?”:] If it does then men by keeping both white and black women disfranchised have already established social equality!”
—Anna Howard Shaw (1847–1919)
“Of course we women gossip on occasion. But our appetite for it is not as avid as a man’s. It is in the boys’ gyms, the college fraternity houses, the club locker rooms, the paneled offices of business that gossip reaches its luxuriant flower.”
—Phyllis McGinley (1905–1978)
“... if we look around us in social life and note down who are the faithful wives, the most patient and careful mothers, the most exemplary housekeepers, the model sisters, the wisest philanthropists, and the women of the most social influence, we will have to admit that most frequently they are women of cultivated minds, without which even warm hearts and good intentions are but partial influences.”
—Mrs. H. O. Ward (1824–1899)