To understand how females who had recently been street homeless made sense of their lived experience, seven women engaged in semi-structured interviews. This study aims to provide an insight into the complexities of the gendered homeless experience, while using theories of trauma and victimisation to propose a new approach to understanding the cycle of female homelessness.
An interpretative phenomenological analysis approach was chosen to explore the phenomenon of female homelessness. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with a small homogenous sample of women recruited in a city in the south of England.
Two super-ordinate themes emerged: victimisation and trauma and the group and the individual. In the male-dominated world of homelessness, women were caught in a cycle of multiple traumatic loss, compounded by pervasive gender-based violence, struggles in identity and systematic control. Gendered, trauma-informed women’s homelessness services are required.
Findings demonstrate the desperate need for an expansion in female-only homelessness services. The lived experience of the participants adds to an evidence base, which is vital to inform effective trauma-informed gendered service provision.
Homelessness policies draw principally on the prevalent literature on men; the UK research with women is lacking. This study gives voice to a hidden population, using the lived experience of women to suggest a new model of female homelessness.
