Routledge Revivals
Shadow Women
First published in 1990, this book emerged from the authors experiences talking to homeless women and her desire to bring these problems to light along with the social injustice that often underlies them. The book also describes being at risk: a paycheck, widowhood, or unfair divorce settlement away from sleeping in a car, living in malls and parks, dining in grocery stores. The author intends to raise awareness and participation, and proposes solutions that do not simply beg more government funded shelters but rather foster self-sufficient living and working by raising self-esteem and community spirit. This book will be of interest to students of sociology.
First published in 1990
by Sheed & Ward
This edition first published in 2016 by Routledge
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Marjorie Bard, Ph.D.
The right of Marjorie Bard to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Publishers Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent.
Disclaimer
The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and welcomes correspondence from those they have been unable to contact.
A Library of Congress record exists under LC control number: 90060897
ISBN 13: 978-1-138-68781-3 (hbk)
ISBN 13: 978-1-315-54211-9 (ebk)
ISBN 13: 978-1-138-68789-9 (pbk)
Shadow Women
Homeless Womens Survival Stories
Marjorie Bard, Ph.D.
Sheed & Ward
Copyright 1990
Marjorie Bard, Ph.D.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by an information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from the Publisher.
Sheed & Ward is a service of National Catholic Reporter Publishing Company, Inc.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 90-60897
ISBN: 1-55612-358-2
Published by: Sheed & Ward
115 E. Armour Blvd. P.O. Box 419492
Kansas City, MO 64141
To order, call: (800) 333-7373
Contents
They spend nights hidden in cars, cemetery crypts, and buildings under constructionor openly in such twenty-four hour havens as Atlantic City hotel-casinos, transportation terminals, and coffee shops. They spend days in malls, libraries, and hospital complexes. They eat their way through grocery stores, use coupons for free or inexpensive food, and dine-and-skip in busy restaurants. They are clean, dressed and coiffed neatly, and seem serene. They look and act like normal shoppers, gamblers, dawdlers, and visitors, but they are solo homeless womenmainly over forty years of age and surprisingly well educatedwho blend into polite society. These shadow women may roam from place to place or establish a relatively permanent daily routine within any radius that suits waking and sleeping needs. I found (and still find) them in all urban and suburban areas: uptown, downtown, crosstown, beach; touristtown, tracktown, port town, and retreats.
I know them and their ways because I was one of them. I escaped a nomad life when I was accepted at UCLA for graduate study, and financed by grants obtained an M.A. and a Ph.D. (My doctoral dissertation focuses on the topics of domestic abuse and homelessness correlated to organizational and community involvement.) During my academic days I also worked at a shelter for battered women, acted as a victim advocate in the Los Angeles City Attorneys Office, and founded an organization to provide direct services to pre-homeless and homeless women. Currently I assist other organizational representatives in efforts to design, fund, and implement programs and projects for abused and homeless women. Consequently, this book is a fifteen-year field journal of womens personal experience narratives concerning why and how they became and remain homeless. The stories reflect community and system responses and needs.
While public and private sector personnel and researchers pursue quantitative and qualitative information-gathering regarding the urban homeless in America (with conflicting data and inferences), there is a dearth of knowledge related to the lone homeless woman who is neither unmistakeably and/or dysfunctionally mentally ill nor highly visible as a streetscene, mission, or shelter member. There is also little information regarding those urban homeless who dwell on the fringes of citiesnot strictly within the boundaries of what we label city or town, but not properly classified as rural. They straddle what academics and professionals carefully try to divide: urban, suburban-urban, suburban, and rural. A large number of homeless individuals travel from one community to another, staying for varying amounts of time in what may be within a citys limits only to move on to find refuge in suburbia-bordering-on-countryand then return to what cannot be denied as an urban area.
The qualitative material presented in this book about a population of homeless women who have been heretofore unperceived and therefore unexposed points to a significant rise in any quantitative data about homeless people. There are obviously large numbers of people who escape the censustaker, professional, and academic. In addition, this material provides new inferences concerning who is and may become homeless; there are millions of housewives, widows, and employed women who do not even suspect that they are at risk.
The women whose stories appear here continuously engage in ingenious methods for finding safe shelter, seeking daily sustenance, and practicing some form of financial gain. They define innovation, and we respect a self-reliant, survivalist attitude. Each woman indicates that she communicates problems and visions to herself and selected others to maintain personal dignity and identity and an acceptable public image. We all understand that need; we do the same. But psychologically, spiritually, socially, and economically these women are on the brink; some will continue to balance precariously between self-sufficiency and the dreaded mission or street syndrome, some will slip into a downward spiral never to regain current standards, and others appear to be creeping back up the ladder to a possible reintegration into mainstream life. Strategy seems to be the root metaphor for survival. Disguise (or perhaps camouflage), composure, and guarded conversation combine as a public mask. Sturdy-and-stylized department store bags, large purses, and clothing with voluminous pockets substitute for the dead giveaway: the shopping basket filled with belongings (although recently I note the use of very fashionable fabric-covered carts). Many homeless women have keys to private lockers, and some have post office boxes, bank accounts, and safety deposit boxes.
