Continuation of Climate Change Accelerates Rural Women into Homelessness - IWD2022

The Working Group to End Homelessness (WGEH) mission is to advocate at the United Nations for persons who are vulnerable, pursuing the human right to adequate housing for all and to end homelessness. In this advocacy work, the working group partners with a variety of member states, UN agencies, NGOs, committees, and organizations. Family homelessness often involves lone women with dependent children and is closely linked to domestic violence and economic marginalization. It is not often associated with the high rates of severe mental illness, drug use, contact with the criminal justice system and poor health, seen among single long-term and recurrently homeless men. Women have also been found sleeping rough and within lone adult homeless populations across Europe, seemingly less numerous than men, but nevertheless clearly present. The point, however, is that there are, quite evidently, women among the people experiencing what is still seen, and often still recorded, as the largely male experience of single adult homelessness. Criticisms of the idea that women’s experience of homelessness is distinct from that of men rest on the argument that the analysis of gender in homelessness is incomplete.