The housing case for a greater focus on gender

People
ViewsMarch 7th, 2012

I have very fond memories of a women and housing conference held at Coleg Harlech in the early 1990s. Back in those days, there were two national level women and housing groups in Wales – looking at issues such as access to housing, domestic abuse and harassment and equality in the workplace. Whilst those groups are long gone, on the employment side of things, the issues have been taken up by Chwarae Teg and more broadly by the work of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. Much progress has been made on a range of areas such as flexible working and supporting women to set up their own businesses. And we have seen an increase in the number of women Chief Executives of housing associations, (although women Chief Housing Officers within local government are less common).

However, specifically in relation to housing, I don’t think that there is sufficient focus on gender. The context for such consideration is clear:

  • women on average have lower incomes than men and therefore have fewer housing options (and early indications of the impact of austerity measures is that they are  having a disproportionate affect on women)
  • women-headed households make up a majority of those in social housing
  • many older women owner-occupiers struggle to keep their homes in good repair. We have a higher rate of owner-occupation inWalesthan the rest of theUK, with many women owners living on low incomes and having little equity in their homes on which to draw to make improvements or adaptations
  • the Corston report highlighted that 20% of women in prison had no permanent accommodation before prison compared with 14% of men. Other evidence on the experience of women offenders notes that:
    • around one-third of women prisoners lose their homes whilst in prison
    • women prisoners are less likely than men to have accommodation arranged for them on discharge from prison
  • there is significant and ongoing demand for women-specific housing services, including those for women survivors of domestic abuse, at a scale that far outweighs the supply of such services

As a board member of Llamau, I am all too aware of the last point. During 2010/11, Llamau supported 79 women in various types of supported accommodation, but were not able to assist a further 140 women for whom the organisation received referrals due to lack of space in the projects. The picture is similar for the five refuges run by Llamau which supported 206 women (and their 210 children) during 2010/11, but were unable to assist a further 263 women due to lack of space.

Given these facts, it is vital that gender issues are not forgotten in a pan-equality strand world. As myself and Susan Hutson concluded in our chapter on women, housing and homelessness in Gender and Social Justice in Wales which was published in 2010[1]:

‘Perhaps, because of the National Assembly’s humanitarian but gender-neutral policies as well as some decline in feminist ideas and challenge to the system, a renewed emphasis on women’s position and particular needs in housing should be restated. This is particularly important as women are still economically worse off than men and so disproportionately dependent on affordable social housing.’


Tamsin Stirling is an independent housing consultant and editor of Welsh Housing Quarterly (www.whq.org.uk)


[1] edited by Nickie Charles and Charlotte Aull Davies and published byUniversity ofWales Press

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