Catering to older women’s housing needs

Dr Kathie Irwin (PhD, MNZM, MInstD), a third generation Māori educator.

As the Coalition to End Women’s Homelessness (CEWH) has progressed its mahi over the past year, it has become increasingly clear that often the most hidden and at-risk group of women experiencing homelessness in Aotearoa New Zealand are our older women.

It is a challenging concept to get to the end of your working and caregiving life, and being an integral part of society, to then be extremely vulnerable to being homelessness.

This data comes three years into the United Nations Decade of Healthy Ageing (2021-2030) which encourages member states to create age-friendly environments, provide integrated care, ensure access to long term care and combat ageism.

In a CEWH-hosted webinar, researchers and policy leaders discuss What works for older women? An evidence-based discussion of findings about older women's needs.

One such researcher is Dr Kathie Irwin (PhD, MNZM, MInstD), a third generation Māori educator of Ngāti Porou, Rakaipaaka, Ngāti Kahungunu, the Orkney Islands, Scotland and Ireland descent.  

Throughout her career Kathie has championed Māori development, anti-racist education and Mana Wāhine/Māori Feminisms, and her insights into inequity in Aotearoa New Zealand, and how Māori older women have become one of the most vulnerable groups susceptible to homelessness, is invaluable.

In the webinar, Dr Irwin opens by speaking about her maternal grandmother Horiana Te Kauru Laughton, who is her inspiration, and will continue to inspire generations to come. 

Born in 1899 as the sixth child of 19, in Nūhaka on the East Coast of Aotearoa New Zealand, Horiana broke the mould for Māori women at the time so she could follow her dream, and work in education.

Horiana was a leader of her time, trying to teach within a racist ideological framework.

Doing so has empowered her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren with an ability to strive to achieve their dreams.

Dr Irwin says the loss of land throughout the 1800s and 1900s shows a rapid deterioration of what the Māori notion of home looks like in a cultural sense, and how that has affected the ability to earn the sorts of resources and income levels women need to be able to sustain a life as a family member, mother, and grandmother, let alone aspire to be a homeowner.

Throughout the webinar, Dr Irwin refers to key research documents, which provide evidence of the inequities Māori – and in particular Māori older women - face today.  

Research includes the Human Rights Commission Pacific Pay Gap, Ethnic and Gender Pay Equity, Retirement Commission Kiwisaver Balances, and Te Ōhanga Wāhine Māori Business and Economic Research Limited.

The impact of these inequities – stemming back to colonisation - is huge.

“That impact long term on our lives, on our life chance and our material circumstances of an education system designed to put us into effectively second-class citizens…has an economic impact and social impact in terms of our ability to gain the wealth and to be able to be a homeowner and our ability to care for ourselves, in older age as well,” Dr Irwin says.

She adds, solutions lie in taking a Te Ao Māori view of homelessness, connecting with whenua once more, and using Tiriti-based modelling, activating rangatiratanga at a whanau, hapu, and iwi level, while including collective options like papakainga.

“In this space, the Crown has been the major vehicle of colonisation and inequity has been designed into our lives, and it's now our opportunity to design it out.”