Homelessness in Australia: Women in Need?

I noticed an article on the ABC web site this morning, “Homeless women, young people most in need”, which said:

Almost 230,000 Australians used a homeless service in the past year and 99,000 of those were children or young people under 24, a report has found.

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare report found an average of 19,000 people slept in a government-supported accommodation each night during the 2011-12 financial year.

The Institute's Geoff Neideck says more women than men needed help to find shelter.

"Overall, we see that that main cause is in relation to domestic and family violence," he said.

…

The first thing that struck me was that throughout the entire article, women were only referenced twice; once in the title, and once in this indirect quote of Neideck (I'd be interested to know what he actually said). The next thing to note is that the only thing supporting the indirect quote is a statement about “domestic and family violence” which doesn't mention women at all ­– in other words, an implicit assumption that all or most victims of domestic violence are women, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary (H/T Dalrock).

The report by the AIHW (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare) referenced by the article can be found here, but there are some significant problems with their data collection. They collect this data from agencies which work with vulnerable groups, and so any bias in the client demographics of these agencies will be reflected in the data. In particular, since most of the some 1500 agencies referred to are exclusively working with female clients, and the majority of funding goes towards these agencies, it's not surprising that men would be under-represented.

Since the AIHW reflects the number of people being helped but not the number of people needing help, I decided to look up the latest census data instead. Released just over a month ago, the government's official estimates of the number of homeless people tell a different story.

Firstly, over 56% of homeless persons are men, and men comprise the majority of homeless persons for every single age group. However, those numbers include people who live in crowded dwellings and temporary accommodation, not just people living “on the street”. Perhaps the situation changes if we look at the unequivocally homeless?

Okay, so it gets worse – men comprise 68% of those most in need of housing support. And before anyone says “but men don't need the same level of protection”, just check the violent crime statistics where you will find that men are significant majority of victims of violent crimes for all age cohorts, so any innate protection they have is obviously not enough to counteract this.

We've already seen that the AIHW admit that most services go to women. The Australian Bureau of Statistics data also shows this:

There are a couple of age groups where it's close, but a majority (51%) of the support goes to women despite men being such a majority of the homeless (56-68%). If Neideck as quoted thinks this is because women are more in need than men, he should look more closely at the data. It's not that we shouldn't be helping women – the issue is that we are not doing enough to help men, and the media still insists on focussing solely on how homelessness impacts women in spite of evidence that men are much more likely to be homeless.

The ABC article title claimed “homeless women, young people most in need.” I'll let the reader examine this last pie chart to help assess the validity of that statement.

In the beginning... (part 1)

What is our basis for understanding humanity, masculinity and femininity? For some, it is just the prevailing cultural attitudes. Others base their understanding on feminist ideology and its construction of ‘patriarchy theory’. Many in the manosphere base their understanding on the precepts of ‘game’ and in the evolutionary psychology that underpins it. But I am not content with any of these approaches.

I want to spend a few posts exploring what the Bible has to say about humanity, masculinity and femininity. Of course, it would be possible to write many books on this, and indeed many such books have been written. But rather than attempt to take on the issue in its entirety, my intention is to start with a couple of key issues and see where things lead from there.

^{Genesis 1:26-31}

²⁶Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

²⁷So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.

²⁸God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

²⁹Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. ³⁰And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground – everything that has the breath of life in it – I give every green plant for food.” And it was so.

³¹God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning – the sixth day.

I contend that any discussion of humanity, masculinity and femininity must begin here. How can we discuss what it means to be a man or a woman without first discussing what it means to be human?

Clearly, fundamental to being human is that we are created in God's ‘image’ (something I will attempt to elucidate shortly). However, too many people stop half-way through verse 26 and so miss the reason why God wanted to make us in his image. “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over [creation].” Therefore, the concept of authority is crucial to understanding humanity – not only are we under God's authority (by his creative authorship), but we are to embody and extend God's authority to creation.

In God's image

I've heard many different theories on the meaning of the term, but most of them are unconvincing. A superficial reading of the translated text leads some to conclude we look like God in physical appearance. Others see it as meaning we have some of God's qualities like being creative and loving. Some preachers I know explain it to mean we are made to function as a community in some kind of trinitarian sense because God is triune. Now, any of these may be true to some extent, but I think we can do a lot better.

We are not made in God's image just for the sake of it. We are made in God's image so that we can embody God's authority to creation. This will be the key to determining what it really means to be created in God's image.

The Hebrew word used for ‘image’ here is צֶלֶם (tselem). The word comes from the Hebrew root word for shade, as in the shade of a tree. I suppose the connotation is that a tree's shade looks somewhat like the tree itself.

The Hebrew word is used 14 other times or so in the Old Testament (not including Aramaic variants). Of course, not all usages will be relevant to its usage in Genesis 1, but since there are not too many I will list all of them for completeness.

^{Gen 5:3}When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image; and he named him Seth.

^{Gen 9:6}Whoever sheds human blood, by humans shall their blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made mankind.

^{I Sam 6:5,11}Make models of the tumors and of the rats that are destroying the country, and give glory to Israel’s god. Perhaps he will lift his hand from you and your gods and your land... They placed the ark of the Lord on the cart and along with it the chest containing the gold rats and the models of the tumors.

^{II Kgs 11:18a / II Chr 23:17}All the people of the land went to the temple of Baal and tore it down. They smashed the altars and idols to pieces and killed Mattan the priest of Baal in front of the altars.

^{Ps 39:6}Surely everyone goes around like a mere phantom; in vain they rush about, heaping up wealth without knowing whose it will finally be.

^{Ps 73:20}They are like a dream when one awakes; when you arise, Lord, you will despise them as fantasies.

^{Eze 7:20}They took pride in their beautiful jewellery and used it to make their detestable idols. They made it into vile images; therefore I will make it a thing unclean for them.

^{Eze 16:17}You also took the fine jewellery I gave you, the jewellery made of my gold and silver, and you made for yourself male idols and engaged in prostitution with them.

^{Eze 23:14}But she carried her prostitution still further. She saw men portrayed on a wall, figures of Chaldeans portrayed in red

^{Amos 5:26}You have lifted up the shrine of your king, the pedestal of your idols, the star of your god – which you made for yourselves.

Taking these verses together, what we see is that an image (tselem) is a representation of an object intended to bear its responsibility, significance, or function. For example, in Genesis 5, Adam's son Seth carries on the responsibility of Adam – of Adam's children, only Seth is described this way; perhaps because Seth is the son whose lineage carries the responsibility given to Adam (leading to fulfilment in Christ). In Genesis 9, we read that it is God who demands an accounting for our blood, but since we are made in his image, it is other humans that typically bear this responsibility. Most of the other verses here speak of idols which are not gods in themselves but rather symbols bearing a god's significance and function of communication in worship.

Mankind bearing God's authority

God was not under compulsion to allow animals or mankind the ability to reproduce. He could have created the Earth fully populated, with everything directly under his authority (and saved all the drama in the process). Instead, he created humanity and gave them his authority to bring about these ends. Therefore, to be made in the image of God means to bear his authority over creation on his behalf.

Having now looked at what it means to be human, in the next parts we shall look at Genesis 2 and 3 and our understanding of what it means to be men and women.

Unless otherwise noted, scripture quoted is taken from the NIV 2011.