Homelessness and Gender Inequality in the Middle East and North Africa Region

Abstract

While homelessness is a global phenomenon, research on homelessness skews heavily towards high-income nations such as those in North America, Europe, and Australia. The academic publishing sector also highly privileges articles written in English. Therefore, homelessness in the global south or non-English as a first language countries is less understood and less recognized. In this article, we explore homelessness as a phenomenon in the Middle East and North African (MENA) region. In particular, we use a gender-based analysis to understand the highly gendered nature of homelessness in this region, presenting an argument that while homelessness is gendered globally, in regions where gender inequality is greater, women and gender-diverse people will be more disproportionately impacted by homelessness. Therefore, obtaining Sustainable Development Goal 5 of ‘Gender Equality’ and efforts to prevent homelessness will go hand-in-hand within the MENA region.