Homeless menstruation. How to feel like a woman when a toilet is a dream, underwear is a luxury, and you have to beg for sanitary pads?
Agnieszka Urazińska: “Homelessness deprives you of everything, but it does not deprive you of gender,” you wrote on your fanpage.
Magdalena Borowiec: And the more I think about it, the more I talk to homeless women, the closer I am to the conviction that it even deprives them of gender.
How?
- Have you ever seen a homeless person on the street in a flowery dress? In makeup? Wearing high heels? Homeless women most often wear trousers, often tracksuit bottoms, if any of them wears a dress, it is baggy, with flat-heeled shoes. The women who told me about their lives without a home pointed out how the homelessness of men and women differs. They all emphasised that it is more difficult to be a woman in life on the street. We live in a patriarchal world, whether we like it or not. The woman is weaker. She can be beaten, raped. There is also more consent to men’s mistakes.
Are women judged more harshly?
- We have greater understanding for men. In the case of women, we often additionally project that she left children, she is probably a bad mother, a bad person, she made unfortunate choices.
And it’s her own fault?
- It happens too often that we are too harsh in judging the homeless, especially women. After all, if we are born in the wrong place and time, if we do not have support, education, and we have addictions or – which happens extremely often – mental disorders, it may and does happen that a person becomes homeless. Coming back to the homelessness of women – please note that they are not conspicuous with their femininity – it is often difficult to distinguish them from men at first glance. For practical reasons and for safety reasons, they blend in with this male crowd. Homeless people often have all their belongings with them – in a bag or a carrier bag. They wear several layers of clothing, because they often feel cold due to exhaustion. The homeless are often sleepy – because street homelessness is marked by fear and vigilance, at any moment someone may come and, for example, kick them out of a staircase. They are malnourished, and they certainly do not eat a balanced diet. These factors cause hormonal changes in women’s bodies and the masculinisation of the body. Women have facial hair. They menstruate irregularly.
Menstruation in street homelessness must be a challenge.
- We can’t even imagine how big a challenge it is. We sometimes wonder where the homeless sleep, whether they have something to eat. What about underwear? The truth is that often they are unable to wash and dry their underwear, so when it gets dirty it is thrown away. And they have no money to buy new items. Imagine what the issue of menstruation might look like in this situation.
We have period poverty in its literal form, right?
- I asked the girls from the shelter where they got their menstrual products when they lived on the street. They used sanitary pads most often, the cheapest ones. In the modest budget they had at their disposal – with money begged or obtained from benefits, they anticipated this monthly expenditure and put money aside. But if there was nothing to put aside, and that happened very often, they made makeshift pads out of toilet paper or scraps of clothes. It also happened that they stood in front of a pharmacy or chemist’s shop and asked strangers to buy sanitary pads. This theme was repeated many times in our conversations. They most often asked women, but they also sometimes asked men for such help.
What were the reactions?
- Often embarrassment for the person who was asked to make such a purchase. But there was a lot of understanding. Nobody refused. On the other hand, homeless women pointed out that when they were forced to ask for sanitary pads, they felt very ashamed. One of the charges, a lady with long experience of homelessness, now lives in a shelter, said that she met a young girl who did not have a penny for sanitary pads. On her behalf, she asked someone at the pharmacy for help. And this girl, with tears in her eyes, said that she herself was ashamed to ask, that admitting failure in such an intimate matter was very humiliating for her. In homelessness, various boundaries of shame are crossed. This is one of them.
And one more question comes to my mind, which we usually don’t ask ourselves – what does the matter of taking care of hygiene look like in street homelessness?
- This is a very important point during menstruation, isn’t it? And it is extremely difficult to be hygienic on the street. And here it is easier for a man – he will stand under a tree, a woman needs a bush, a leaf. And what about menstruation. Here the problem of access to sanitary facilities grows to enormous proportions. I heard stories about toilets in shopping malls where empathetic security guards do not chase the homeless out. But the coronavirus has come. Imagine what happened during the lockdown when these centres were closed. For us, it was a problem where to shop. But the homeless were cut off from places where you can take care of intimate hygiene. In Poznań, where I work, there are three places where a homeless person can take a shower – these are two paid baths and a heating facility for the homeless with showers. But in time of the coronavirus, the baths were closed. There is one place left in the city, open at very specific times. And there was a paradox – during the pandemic, we expect people to frequently wash their hands and sanitise, and some of them were deprived of their only access to toilets or showers. Stories about problems with access to hot water are a recurring theme in the stories of homeless women – this shortage bothers them a lot, because the need to take care of themselves also remains in situations of a major crisis. Even in a very difficult situation, a woman longs to feel pretty and well-groomed. I heard from women staying on allotments, how they heated water for washing in bowls exposed to the sun.
What about access to a gynaecologist?
- In Poland, a homeless person can obtain health insurance and seek medical advice. But none of the women I spoke to on the street took advantage of this opportunity. A bit out of embarrassment and fear of being judged. Partly because before such a visit you have to wash yourself and dress properly. And know where to go, at what times the doctor admits patients, how to sign up. But most of all because the need to take care of one’s own health is in the last place in the homelessness crisis. A homeless woman is trying to survive – she is worried about what to eat, where to sleep and to keep warm. If she has a man with her – and most often she does because it is easier to survive – then she cares for him. The woman stands in the second row and puts her needs last. It is also characteristic – and quite understandable – that in the period of street homelessness a person is in a state of high tension. Because if you sleep on allotments, at a railway station or in an encampment in an empty building, someone can chase you out every night, scare you off with a dog, or hurt you. Often, this stress only disappears when the homeless person goes to an institution where they are safe, have a roof over their head, warm food and no one chases them out. It is only after some time that the unmet needs of the organism are heard, neglect and diseases make themselves felt. There were no stories of malaise during periods in these stories. Something really serious must be going on for a homeless person to seek medical support. There is no money for drugs. There is no space for paying attention to your own needs. Women don’t go to gynaecologists, they don’t examine their breasts, they don’t do any tests.
What is the scale of homelessness?
- It is estimated that in Poland there are about 30,000 homeless people, and over a dozen percent are women. So we have 5-6 thousand homeless women. Hundreds of them in street homelessness.
What is Polish homelessness like?
- Very often mentally disturbed. I have seen such a picture in recent years. It is often mental problems, which are additionally combined with addictions and other neglect, that are the cause of the greatest problems. The “Pogotowie Społeczne” Association has existed in Poznań since 2004 and during this period we have developed a support system for homeless people – for those who take refuge at railway stations, on allotments, in vacant houses or encampments, and for those who decide to use a hostel or shelter. We provide support for therapists and social workers, and help with the preparation of documents. We also have employment programmes and seven training flats where the homeless learn or remember how to function independently, albeit with support, outside the facility. At the Social Integration Centre, which I am the manager of, homeless people acquire competences allowing them to return to the labour market. They learn to regain faith in themselves, take part in professional workshops – for example, general construction, trade, and tailoring workshops. They can also learn about Poland and life planning. Because they lack all these competences.
Are there successes?
- It’s a relative matter. For a street worker who works with homeless people in the street, it is a success if a person agrees to accept help and be taken to a shelter. For me, working with the homeless in the institution, making my charges independent would be such a success. And such stories do happen. But many are depressing. I cannot cope with the story of a wise woman with great potential, who after years in the street ended up in a shelter and here, during a gynaecological examination, it turned out that she had ovarian cancer. This news broke her down so much that she stopped fighting for herself, she doesn’t want to be treated, and she returned to her encampment. She will die in great agony. I can’t get over my feelings of failure and sadness. Just like when I see homelessness passing from one generation to the next. I remember the homeless women we tried to help, they had children. Now these children, as adults who cannot find their place in life, live in a social housing estate. And in the sociotherapeutic day-room we run, their children play under the supervision of teachers. And we are also worried about them.
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The Periodic Coalition, an association of organisations, experts and activists, carries out activities to counteract the problem of period poverty and menstrual exclusion. One of the groups supported by the Coalition are homeless women. More information on the activities of the Periodic Coalition can be found at: okresowakoalicja.pl
Author: Agnieszka Urazińska
The text was published in „Wysokie Obcasy” a magazine of „Gazeta Wyborcza” on 14 August 2021