Ahead of this year’s International Women’s Day on Saturday 8 March, HQN’s Tristan Smith caught up with Tracey Downie and Zaiba Qureshi, Co-Chairs of the Women’s Housing Forum, about their work, meeting women’s needs in housing and why they consider housing to be very much a feminist issue.

The Women’s Housing Forum began as a collective of women working in and around the housing sector who wanted to address the inequalities and specific issues facing women. While dedicated organisations like Women’s Pioneer Housing and Housing for Women were doing – and continue to do – valuable work, these professionals were united by their belief that the whole sector needed to put more effort and attention towards meeting women’s needs.

“We began 2018 as a group of women working in the housing sector and having seen the inequalities women faced when accessing and retaining suitable housing,” Zaiba Qureshi, who is also Chief Executive of Housing for Women, explains in an email conversation. “The forum emerged as a means to address the structural inequality that women face, aiming to influence housing providers and policy makers to address women’s specific needs.”

Speaking separately on Teams, Tracey Downie adds: “They talked about it, set up a steering group to think ‘How are we going to influence social housing to actually recognise women’s housing need?’ and thought that the best way round would be through the steering group to host webinars, to host events and to speak up about the challenges that women are facing in social housing.”

For five years, the Women’s Housing Forum has been doing that and more. It works with a range of social housing and other professional partners to influence the sector, provide opportunities to learn about women’s needs and discuss best practice. The forum webinars are free to attend and its website provides free access to collated research and resources.

Most recently, the forum has partnered with the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH) to deliver a virtual event on women’s careers in housing and construction. They have also previously worked with the CIH on examining the impact of having No Recourse to Public Funds on migrant women and with Shelter on homelessness and women in temporary accommodation. It will continue to run regular virtual events throughout the year.

The analysis is not one-dimensional, though. Tracey, who is also CEO of Women’s Pioneer Housing, highlights the importance of intersectionality, particularly in terms of mental health and disability, race and having no recourse to public funds, as these factors can have an enormous impact on women’s access to safe and affordable housing.

For both Tracey and Zaiba, their professional roles in women’s housing goes beyond their work with the forum. Women’s Pioneer Housing (WPF) and Housing for Women (HFW) have both been providing housing services to women for over 90 years.

WPH currently owns around 1,000 properties in West London, mostly in large Victorian or Edwardian buildings, converted into studio and one-bedroom flats for single women. By the end of 2026, its latest development of two high-rise blocks should be completed, which will help to house more of the hundreds of women who apply to the waiting list.

HFW also operates in London, offering over 900 homes for women and their families. It also provides dedicated support to women who have experienced domestic violence, are victims of modern slavery and human trafficking, or are on release from prison.

In their roles, Tracey and Zaiba see first hand how essential it is for housing providers to acknowledge and meet women’s needs. While their organisations provide very dedicated support, Zaiba emphasises that this should not solely be the domain of women’s housing providers: “We would like to see more mainstream associations doing more to address women’s needs,” she says.

To both Tracey and Zaiba, housing remains a feminist issue. “Women are disproportionately affected when it comes to access to and retaining safe, accessible housing. This is a direct result of the structural inequalities they face,” Zaiba says.

Though housing affordability is a key issue generally, the Office for National Statistics shows this is also a gendered problem. It found that, in April 2024, median hourly earnings excluding overtime for full-time employees were £19.24 for men and £17.88 for women. Zaiba also highlighted how women are more likely to be in low paid, part time and insecure employment, which then impacts their finances and access to affordable housing.

Caring responsibilities – for both children and adult relatives – also disproportionately affect women. This is not just in terms of the cost (though this is an enormous factor), but also on time and the areas they can live in, as things like proximity to schools will affect their options.

Trauma histories and domestic violence, too, affect women disproportionately. Violence against women and girls remains endemic and the Home Office estimates at least one in 12 will be subjected to it every year and one in four in their lifetimes. Past experiences, however, are not typically considered in housing allocation unless there is an ongoing risk to women’s safety, despite the impact on their mental health and the more specific needs this trauma history might create when it comes to being able to settle and feel safe.

Even when there is a recent or ongoing risk, the needs of these vulnerable women are not always considered in full. Tracey recalls a particular case in which a vulnerable woman who had survived domestic violence was placed in a social housing property quickly – appearing to be a success story – but without her trauma being considered. “She was moved into a small block, and it was all men,” she recounts. “There was someone that was forever knocking on the door trying to speak to her and she was just so scared all the time.” In cases like this one especially, she emphasises how important it is to ensure accommodation is suitable and ask the right questions to better understand and meet women’s needs.

Intimate partner and domestic violence are readily understood as central to women’s housing needs, particularly when it comes to the need to escape abusive environments. 40% of homeless women cite domestic violence as a factor in their homelessness and the work done by HFW’s dedicated support for these survivors demonstrates just how essential it is to provide the right support services; over the course of a year, its domestic abuse referral and advice line handles overs 3,500 calls.

But WPH has helped women fleeing their homes because of the behaviour of landlords and other residents too. “A lot of the applications that we receive are from people that have fled private property because of their landlord, because of the behaviour of the landlord or – where they are sharing – because of the behaviour of other people that are sharing. And they need that safety,” Tracey says. “We’re absolutely focused on making sure that we will only provide accommodation in an area that is considered reasonably safe.”

These safety assessments go beyond statistics, though. They look at location, proximity to transport and – arguably most importantly – what it would feel like to walk alone as a woman, particularly at night: “It can often be that sense test, can’t it, in terms of ‘do we feel that it feels safe’?”

While control of the neighbourhoods housing providers operate in is not a quick or easy fix, Tracey highlighted quick and easy ways to make an area safer for women. She recommends keeping bushes and trees trimmed back, avoiding planters or other decorative elements that would be easy for an assailant to hide behind, ensuring that communal spaces are well-lit and investing in secure entry points to help women feel safer in their homes. Zaiba echoed this and mentioned accessibility for pushchairs as another element of inclusive design for women.

When asked what more the whole social housing sector could do to support women, she recommended organisations focus on safety and speak to both residents and women in their workforce, find out if they feel unsafe in specific areas or at specific times and then think about what could be done to help.

International Women’s Day is one day a year, but women’s housing needs should not be contained to single conversations or tick-box exercises. As the Women’s Housing Forum and all the women investing their time, dedication and expertise in running it show, they need to be embedded in our practice continuously, all year round.