Data sets--one primarily on women in a study of publicly funded housing, and a second on the "hidden homeless," who are primarily men, will be provided by the host institution, and will be used to examine: 1) how men's and women's responses to destitution vary; and 2) the range of strategies women and men use to survive destitution, the relationship among those strategies, changes over time in their use, and their consequences for various aspects of well-being. Appropriate data analytic techniques--both qualitative and quantitative--will be used to compare women and men as well as to make comparisons among different groups of women. The proposed research will examine survival strategies in the face of destitution, especially as they are shaped by gender. This project furthers VPW program objectives to provide opportunities for women to advance their careers in science or engineering through research, and to encourage other women to pursue careers in these areas through the investigator's enhanced visibility as a role model on the host campus. The proposed activities which contribute to the second objective include: collaboration with an ongoing project at the Institute, a seminar for graduate students, mentoring individual graduate research assistants, consulting with undergraduates in the Honors College, as well as presenting talks to both the Department of Sociology and other units on campus.
