Think of a bum and what comes to mind? Someone in ragged clothes, shuffling around. Someone who doesn’t work and probably for reasons that are blameworthy. Think of a wino and a similar image comes to mind only with a bottle these time and perhaps reeling around.
In both cases, the image these pejorative terms conjure up is inevitably male.
Sometime in the 1970s and 1980s, the bums and winos of our society became known as “the homeless.†Why? Warren Farrell in The Myth of Male Power pointed out the probable reason: because they were joined by an appreciable number of women when the mental hospitals went through “deinstitutionalization.â€ÂÂ
Interestingly, female homeless are called “bag ladies.†The last word of the two-part term seems like an attempt to soften it by giving them the status of “ladies.†The first part of the term refers to the places where these homeless keep their belongings. Taken as a whole, “bag lady†has none of the disgust attached to the words traditionally associated with men who sink to the economic bottom.
Even with the growth of female homeless, 85% of those in this category are men. If those figures were reversed and the majority of those sleeping on the streets or on park benches were women, would society as a whole be more determined to address this problem?
