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:
“In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass,
I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is sign’d by God’s name.
And I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe’er I go,
Others will punctually come for ever and ever.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
“What happens is that, as with drugs, he needs a stronger shot each time, and women are just women. The consumption of one woman is the consumption of all. You can’t double the dose.”
—Ian Fleming (1908–1964)
“What happens in a strike happens not to one person alone.... It is a crisis with meaning and potency for all and prophetic of a future. The elements in crisis are the same, there is a fermentation that is identical. The elements are these: a body of men, women and children, hungry; an organization of feudal employers out to break the back of unionization; and the government Labor Board sent to “negotiate” between this hunger and this greed.”
—Meridel Le Sueur (b. 1900)