We had an interesting speaker at our meeting last Thursday. Professor Kate Moss has many years experience in applied research and has recently been researching into the impact of homelessness on women. (https://www.derby.ac.uk/staff/kate-moss/)
She discovered that Domestic Abuse is frequently a precipitator of homelessness throughout Europe and described women’s homelessness as a hidden problem as many women do not make use of the facilities available for homeless people, preferring to sleep in doorways or bus shelters or spend time travelling on trains and buses. Kate also reported how women’s homelessness is impacting on sex work, sexual exploitation and sex for rent. She gave examples of easily found adverts on websites that list rooms for rent with very clear messages of sex for payment.
Her recommendations have been for a gendered approach to homelessness and for the provision of more suitable homeless services for women. She also recommended viewing Chanel 4 “Dispatches” programme from 2017- “Gatekeeping: Britain’s Homeless Scandal”
If you would like to join us to learn more about the problems women face and to help them to overcome some of these problems, you are very welcome to join us at a meeting. We also get together for a meal before the business meeting each month which is an informal way to get to meet us and understand what we do.
Our next meeting is Thursday December 1st at 7pm, at The Sleep Inn on the Kingsway Retail Park. We meet at 6pm for a meal at The Kings Highway pub on the same retail park. We have been tasked to buy something orange from a charity shop to wear to this meeting in order to highlight the 16 days of activism against violence against women, when Soroptimists and other women’s groups “Orange the World” to bring the problem to people’s attention.
If you would like to know more, please email us at soropsderby@gmail.com or check out our Facebook page: Soroptimist International of Derby