Street Spirit July 2004

Women on the Street: Dangerous Lives and Premature Deaths

by Robert L. Terrell

Street life is particularly hard on women. Nonetheless, a bewilderingly large number of them are being forced to subsist in doorways, alleys, freeway medians and crude curbside cribs throughout the Bay Area.

They hail from every segment of the social hierarchy. Some of them were obviously financially well off at some point in their lives. Having fallen on hard times due to bad luck, bad decisions and a bad economy, they are forced to hustle for their daily bread on the streets with cohorts who have known only poverty, neglect and despair.

Street life enforces modes of equality that breed a common culture. And street people are required to master the rules and status markers quickly in order to survive.

Sleeping, eating and handling the myriad tasks associated with being alive in a constantly shifting, frequently dangerous community of thousands is a far more complicated affair than those who have never been faced with the task might imagine.

As far as gender is concerned, the most important thing to understand about local street culture is that it is harder on women than men. Thus it should come as no surprise that the tough circumstances in which local street women scrounge on a daily basis in search of the basic necessities of life are extremely mean. Most important, far too many of the women who endure these conditions are not faring well.

Numerous public and private studies of local street people indicate that women constitute a growing percentage of those who live on the streets. Such studies also note that street women endure a bewildering variety of debilitating health problems.

The public health literature specifically pertinent to their worsening dilemma indicates that street women tend to be plagued by genitourinary problems, sexually transmitted diseases, pregnancy complications, pulmonary diseases, vascular disorders, hypertension, breast cancer and a variety of serious neurological problems.

As a result, homeless women are far more likely to pay emergency visits to hospitals and clinics in search of care than their counterparts who reside in housing. They are also more likely to be hospitalized once they show up at an emergency room.

High risk of rape and assault

In addition, street women tend to be multiple victims of rape and other vicious forms of violent assault.

This excerpt from a recent report issued by San Francisco's St. Anthony's Foundation provides a representative capsule summary of the magnitude of sexual abuse and violence that dominate the precarious lives of local street women.

"A significant percent of homeless women have a history of physical or sexual abuse. 41% of homeless white women and 21% of homeless women of color suffered childhood sexual abuse. 38% of homeless white women and 16% of women of color suffered physical abuse as children. For many women much of this abuse extends beyond childhood, as 50% of homeless women and children are fleeing from domestic violence...

"Victims of domestic violence are increasingly being diagnosed as suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome. Since the violent source of the trauma has been perpetrated by people close to the victims, rather than caused by impersonal violence of a war situation, its effects are often more severe and long lasting.

"In addition, the intimate nature of the abuse destroys the familial safety networks of the victim. There are often complex connections between family relationships and vulnerability to homelessness."

If nothing else, those words suggest that socially malignant problems embedded in the core institutions of mainstream society are primary sources of the street-side black holes inhabited by far too many women.

In any event, the soul-withering nature of the dilemma facing street women who must endure the emotional and physical consequences of abuse of the sort described in the above excerpt is often reflected in their eyes. But it is extremely difficult to see this in a direct fashion because street women rarely look strangers directly in the eye. Most often, eye-to-eye contact with them is oblique and fleeting.

It is as if they feel that if they look too long into the eyes of those who reside inside the exclusive embrace of mainstream society, they will inadvertently reveal the fear, insecurity, self-doubt and shame that weighs on their spirits, undermining their chances for healthy, long-term survival.

Given the fact that most street women do not possess the size and strength of their male counterparts, they are required to adopt different coping methods. Few street women are capable of pushing or pulling caravans of liberated shopping carts filled with hundreds of bottles and aluminum cans over long distances, which frequently include precipitous hills.

Women are strong enough to sell illegal drugs, and some do. But street-side drug dealers must be prepared to handle potentially deadly violence at any moment. The capacity to respond to violence with greater violence is part of the job description. That is one of the many reasons why most street women avoid this precarious mode of hustling the coins they need in order to maintain.

Street-level gender discrimination

The gendered dimensions of street living that favor males over females are particularly apparent in the highly ritualized begging rituals employed by local practitioners. For example, homeless males frequently confront passers-by with caustic verbal taunts interspersed with guilt-tripping requests for "spare change." Males also commonly use black humor, cynicism or horrific tales of woe to disarm potential donors.

It is different with street women.

Excepting young, relatively healthy ones of the sort who sprawl along the sidewalks of Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley and Haight Street in San Francisco, street women rarely confront passers-by with direct verbal requests for money. Instead, they tend to communicate their desperate need for financial assistance from total strangers via handmade signs and strategically placed begging cups.

In keeping with the gendered codes of domination and submission that regulate street culture, women are generally excluded from working the crowd at other lucrative locations such as freeway entrances and exits. The same is true of the entrances to major transportation hubs such as downtown BART stations.

More often than not, street women who beg in order to survive are relegated to the least desirable locations. These include lightly traveled secondary streets, and other awkward locations where it is easy for potential donors to miss their presence, or worse yet, easily pass without having to acknowledge the woman's cup, jug, open palm or empty paper plate.

Homeless males frequently work together in groups in order to boost their income, but this is rarely the case with street women. Mostly, women work alone.

But a notable number of street women do keep relatively large dogs as companions. Dogs also provide protection from human predators of the sort who have few, if any, reservations about preying on defenseless women. Those of us who walk city streets late at night are aware that dogs also provide warmth for those who sleep in exposed locations.

On cold, bone-chilling nights when the wind is howling, and sheets of icy rain sweep the streets in relentless waves, the warmth of a large dog's body during the long hours before sunrise provides a basic kind of comfort that most human beings in our society take for granted.

Chances of escape are slim

Once a woman ends up on the streets, her chances of escaping are slim. Housing is scarce and expensive, and the few jobs for which the vast majority of street women are qualified simply do not pay enough to enable workers to afford anything resembling permanent housing.

The long, slow, depressing slide toward the state of existence wherein one simply doesn't care anymore is made even more precipitous for street women because of unrealistic, insensitive expectations of others. For example, in our society females are generally required to be better groomed than males. Wealthy women set the standards for acceptable grooming, and those in the middle and lower classes emulate them as best they can.

This unwritten, but critically important, requirement presents the street women who seek to claw their way back into the mainstream with a perplexing dilemma.

They cannot afford to purchase the kinds of grooming and attire required for mainstream acceptance. And even if they manage to scrape together enough money to purchase the required clothing, street living precludes their ability to take regular baths. Street living also precludes opportunities to fine-tune their grooming such that they might qualify for access to the bottom of the mainstream.

Given such barriers, most street women are poor candidates for re-entry into mainstream society. This is particularly the case for emigrant women, those who don't speak English as a first language, women of color and older women who have lived on the streets for years.

It doesn't take tremendous imagination to understand the manner in which repeated rejections by those who police the entry points to mainstream society exert a devastating impact on the pride and self-esteem of street women.

Many persevere undaunted. But far too many others are embarked on a perilous journey toward oblivious surrender to perpetual squalor and premature death.

back top