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International Women’s Day
Listening to Women and Designing Services That Work for Women.
Today is International Women’s Day and I’m thinking about the wonderful women I work alongside every day.
In our work, we often meet women at some of the most difficult times in their lives.
Today has allowed me to reflect on how important the right support can be and how much can change when people care and work together to shape services around the women who use them.
I work with women who have experienced homelessness, addiction, poverty and mental ill health. Through this work, I see how housing, health and support services affect their lives often in complicated ways. Many of these services were not originally designed with women’s realities in mind, especially women who have faced trauma, violence, homelessness and addiction.
Women experiencing homelessness often face additional challenges. Many have experienced domestic or sexual violence, which can make it harder to feel safe asking for help. Yet only a small proportion of homelessness accommodation in the UK offers women-only spaces and mixed-gender services can feel unsafe.
Women’s homelessness is often less visible than men’s because women may stay temporarily with friends, remain in unsafe situations, or hide to avoid the dangers of sleeping rough.
Our work with women in homeless hostels in York highlighted other challenges too, including ongoing harassment and predatory behaviour, with very little support available to address it.
Similar gaps exist across other support services. Women seeking help for drug or alcohol use often face barriers such as childcare responsibilities, stigma or services that do not fully understand the complexity of their lives. In practice, this means women often have to work much harder to get the support they need.
This is why the voices and experiences of women who have been through these situations are so important.
International Women’s Day is often celebrated for women’s strength, especially the strength of those who have faced difficult circumstances. But it should also be a time to recognise the value of women’s knowledge especially the insight that comes from lived experience, which is far too often overlooked.
The women I work with bring far more than personal stories. They bring skill, insight and an understanding of how systems really work. They are thoughtful, observant and skilled at turning their experiences into practical lessons for organisations and services. Their perspectives make every project we work on stronger.
Their experiences shape how conversations unfold, how trust is built and how understanding grows. They bring empathy, awareness and a determination to make things better, which changes the way the work itself happens.
Discussions move beyond research methods or policy language and instead focus on a real understanding of how systems affect women and how they can be improved.
On International Women’s Day, it is these women, their talent, insight and commitment to change, that I feel most proud to work alongside.
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