The Role of Stressful Life Events among Women Experiencing Homelessness: An Intragroup Analysis

Abstract

Highlights• Homeless women are especially vulnerable to stressful life events (SLEs).• The Cluster A was characterized by low levels of SLEs.• The Cluster B was characterized by childhood and adolescence SLEs.• The Cluster C was characterized by typically adulthood-and women-specific SLEs.• Initiatives to help homeless women should be sensitive to these subgroup differences.

Intimate partner sexual violence and violent victimisation among women living homeless in Madrid (Spain)

“…A very high percentage of women living homeless interviewed in Madrid had suffered abuse during their childhood and/or adolescence and violence in their family environment. In the opinion of different authors (Fernández-Rasines & Gámez-Ramos, 2013;Guillén et al, 2020;Herrero, 2003;Magnilio, 2019;Marpsat, 2000;Rodríguez-Moreno et al, 2020b;Rodríguez-Moreno, Roca, et al, 2020;Roy et al, 2014;Tinland et al, 2018;Wenzel et al, 2000), violent victimisation suffered by women during childhood and adolescence may be related to subsequent situations of homelessness. In this regard, it is of note that a significant percentage of the women interviewed had been exposed to violence against their mothers from an early age, as well as suffering T A B L E 5 Results of the binary logistic regression analysis for the prediction of having suffered intimate partner sexual violence (IPSV) psychological, physical and/or sexual abuse at the hands of a family member.…”

“…Victimisation often precedes the situation of homelessness, increasing the risk of suffering other forms of poly-victimisation as a result of the vulnerability women face when they arrive on the streets (Taylor, 2008). Women living homeless also show a significant deterioration in their overall health (Rodríguez-Moreno et al, 2020b), which in certain cases could be the result of intense exposure to psychological, physical and sexual abuse over the course of their lives (Tinland et al, 2018). Roodman and Clum (2001) estimate that between 15% and 79% of women in the general population had suffered some form of victimisation from an early age, with a correlation between experiences of victimisation in childhood and revictimisation in adulthood (Ecott et al, 2020).…”

Stressful life events: Typology of aggression and mistreatment in male perpetrators of gender‐based violence

“…Finally, Group C (53.4%) was characterized by the lowest occurrence of SLEs throughout the life cycle. The three profiles accord with previous studies that have used the chronicity of SLEs and social exclusion to explain the behavior of men who commit GBV (Muñoz et al ., 2005; Rodríguez‐Moreno et al ., 2020).…”

“…Following the procedure of Muñoz, Panadero, Pérez, and Quiroga (2005) for the study of stressful life events, the analyses were carried out in two successive steps. In the first place, a cluster analysis was carried out using the K‐means test to classify the aggressors with respect to the stressful life events suffered and to test the structure of three groups found in studies with groups in a situation of social risk (Rodríguez‐Moreno, Panadero, & Vázquez, 2020). The different stressful life events were used as analysis variables.…”

Health situation and perceived health status among women experiencing homelessness: A longitudinal study in Spain

“…People experiencing homelessness reflect one of the most extreme example of the worldwide phenomenon of poverty and social exclusion (Guillén et al, 2020;Suarez et al, 2018;Vázquez et al, 2017) and, of those people, women are particularly vulnerable in a number of ways (Vázquez et al, 2019a), with their own set of circumstances and backgrounds, usually differing from those of their male counterparts (Aldridge et al, 2018). Unfortunately, women tend to be under-represented in research on homelessness, and the gender issues of this group are under-researched (Bretherton, 2020;Rodríguez-Moreno et al, 2021), despite gender analysis being a key focal point in the field of public health, in order to understand social inequities and inequalities in health (Hankivsky et al, 2018). According to Winetrobe et al (2017), the consideration of the excluded population as a homogeneous group limits the development of appropriate health and social security policies.…”