Dear Friends,
As many of you likely know, March is National Women’s History month! This month, we join many other nonprofits and organizations uplifting and celebrating the achievements of women throughout our own history here in the United States and abroad.
For me, it’s often easy to default to thinking most often about the exceptional yet familiar faces of women from our textbooks- Sacagawea, Susan B. Anthony, Harriet Tubman, Marie Curie, Rosa Parks and Malala are a few of the names that come to mind. This year I challenged myself to lean into learning beyond the women most often included in our conversations of what women’s suffrage and achievements looks like. I spent some time with Ida B. Wells and her bravery and tenacity in bringing to light lynchings in the South. I read up on Theresa Kachindamoto, a Malawi Chief who has in her tenure annulled 850 child marriages and is a stalwart advocate for education for all genders. Finally, I was inspired by Mia Yamamoto, a leading trans rights activist who was born in an Japanese-American Internment Camp during World War II and went on to become a passionate criminal defense lawyer who fought for clients who were most impacted by the criminal justice system.
On a much more local front, I want to take a moment to also recognize our team of incredible women on the Facing Homelessness Staff and Board. We are so incredibly lucky to have so many passionate, driven, intelligent and caring women leading us forward at every level of our organization. Facing Homelessness has taken great strides in the last year to fully close the gender wage gap within our organization as we recognize how often women across the workforce are expected to perform at the same or higher rates as their male colleagues and too often are still paid at only .8 (or .70 or .65 for black and hispanic women) to the dollar that their white male counterparts make.
The National Alliance to End Homelessness attributes the wage gap as one cause of homelessness and housing instability for women. While we know that men experience homelessness at higher rates than women, “homelessness experienced by women is made unique by their disproportionate experiences of gender-based violence including domestic violence, dating violence, stalking, human trafficking, and sexual assault, and is experienced both cisgender… and transgender women… Due to longstanding systemic racism and sexism, women’s homelessness is disproportionately experienced by BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ communities.” (National Alliance to End Homelessness)
This month, we’re highlighting two stories of women in our community who navigated their own experiences of housing instability to reach us: Jester, who shared her story with us on how she got connected to Facing Homelessness and became our newest BLOCK Resident, and Arianna Lyman, an incredible member of our volunteer community who has joined us in coming closer through hosting haircut events with an emphasis on self love and worth for our Window of Kindness clients. We have women and femmes in every sphere of our community here at Facing Homelessness: Window of Kindness volunteers, BLOCK Hosts, BLOCK shop volunteers, program partners, guests, and Residents. All of them, and you, contribute to making this community stronger, more vibrant, more loving and more inclusive.
In love and solidarity,
Phoebe + The Facing Homelessness Team
