National social research on homelessness is generally characterized by a strong focus on homeless men, which subsequently means a deficient focus on homeless women, and indicates a tendency towards a lack of studies on homelessness from a gender perspective. On this basis we have only been able to identify a sparse amount of national research-based knowledge on homelessness from a gender perspective, but there exists a larger amount of international research-based knowledge. Fur-thermore, we found a large amount of national knowledge on gender from practical experiences, working with for instance substance abusers. These different types of knowledge show that men and women have diverse gender needs, and that these gender differences should give rise to gender-specific interventions in the practical social work. This knowledge is interesting given the fact that homeless women compared with homeless men represent a smaller amount of the total quantity of homeless people which can lead to women being ignored in the practical social work. On the basis of the introduced knowledge we wish to contribute further insights on homelessness from a gender perspective, by examining whether social workers in the practical social work in homeless shelters are aware of the fact that they work with both male and female.
In order to shed light on this we wish to examine if social workers at two selected homeless shelters with women sections experience that there exists gender differences in the needs of the homeless, and how the social workers make interventions based on these needs. The project also contains two sub-questions. The first sub-question concerns whether the social workers identify needs of the homeless which the social workers do not make interventions towards. In the second sub-question we ask if the interventions made by the social workers towards the needs of the homeless can be characterized as gender-differentiated or non-gender-differentiated. Through the analysis of the project we wish to examine both the main research-question and the two sub-questions.
This project is designed as a multiple case study with inspiration from Robert K. Yin. Empirically this study is based on a combination of qualitative methods where we use both interviews and ob-servations. We have collected six semi-structured interviews with seven different social workers from the two selected homeless shelters. We have also completed five observations at one of the two selected homeless shelters, where we followed the social workers in their daily work with the homeless men and women. The theories applied for this study is based on a combination of a phe-nomenological and a hermeneutic approach. Furthermore, we have theoretically used Erik Allardt’s need theory and various elements from the feministic approach.
Through our use of Allardt’s need theory and the feminism in the analysis, we found it plausible to state that the social workers at two selected homeless shelters with women sections experience that there are both similarities and gender differences in the unfulfilled needs of the homeless men and women. In relation to the identified gender differences in the needs of the homeless we concluded that the social workers have a greater awareness of gender specific needs of women than of gender specific needs of men.
Furthermore, we found it possible to conclude that all of the interventions made by the social work-ers are based on the identified needs of the homeless. In the cases where the social workers identify similarities in the needs of the homeless, they exclusively raise non-gender-differentiated interven-tions. Besides this the identifications by the social workers of gender-specific needs of the homeless men and women almost entirely raise gender-differentiated interventions. These gender-differentiated interventions are solely targeting the women, whereas it can be concluded that there are being initiated more women-orientated interventions than male-orientated interventions. In this respect the social workers are more orientated towards the women both in terms of identifying spe-cific women needs and in terms of making gender-differentiated interventions targeting the women.