ABSTRACT
This chapter draws on intersectional feminism to explore understandings of homelessness. It examines how social workers' bodies and identities are gendered when working in diverse fields of homelessness, including gendered violence. It then centralises gender and power relations, emphasising the importance of embracing feminism in social work practice in the field of homelessness and gendered violence, in the feminist analysis of social work responses to homelessness. Homelessness is a gendered and multi-dimensional human rights issue. The United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, which states that every person has the right to a standard of living that is adequate for their health and wellbeing, including access to food, clothing, housing and medical care. Intersectional theorising in the 1980s and 1990s criticised the essentialism of white identity-based politics by highlighting the inseparability of racial and gender oppressions and the socio-political location and standpoint of black feminists.
