Research on women and housing shows the gender wage gap and caring responsibilities not only leave women worse off than men, but could adversely affect their housing security over the next decade.

The latest statistics on homelessness in the ACT revealed the largest group of those without a place to sleep were women with children.

FirstPoint, the central intake service for homeless people in the ACT, assessed almost 2000 people in the first seven months of this year.

Since its inception late last year, the organisation has received an increasing number of calls from older, single women.

Swinburne University Institute of Social Research fellow Andrea Sharam, will issue the findings of her latest study, The Women and Housing Affordability Survey, next month.

She said a large portion of female baby boomers were single, poor and facing significant housing insecurity.

She believed the group were the new face of homelessness, but said they were ''barely acknowledged''.

Ms Sharam said women were more likely to self-manage their homelessness by becoming housekeepers, boarding with others, or swapping sex for a place to sleep.

It is because of this, she said, that homeless women were not being accurately counted in state and national data.

She wants the definition of women's homelessness to be reviewed, with an emphasis on a gender analysis.

''Ten years ago [homeless] services were seeing women in retirement,'' Ms Sharam said.

''Now they are seeing loads of women who are 50.''

''It's driven in part by high rental costs and the underlying housing crisis.''

There were 105,000 homeless Australians at the 2006 census. The majority were single and almost half were women.

More than half of the 1800 people assessed by FirstPoint this year were women and people in a family.

Less than 400 people were 40 or above and more than 650 were 18 or younger.

Almost 500 were placed in homelessness accommodation services - 287 of them in crisis accommodation and 209 in transitional accommodation.

FirstPoint manager Sue Sheridan said when people think of homelessness they think of men in their 40s and 50s on the street. She believed older, single women were the new face of homelessness.

''The focus within women's services is for women and children escaping domestic violence, so for those women and children who don't fit into that category, there is hardly any space for them.''

YWCA Canberra executive director Rebecca Vassarotti said the organisation's priority was older single women.

''There is this emerging group of women who have been in and out of the workforce, are older, might have had a family breakdown, so they don't have [any assets] ... This is going to be a really big issue,'' Ms Vassarotti said.

While some believe there is a need for more crisis accommodation in the capital, National Foundation for Australian Women social policy committee chairwoman Marie Coleman said there would not be so many homeless women if there was more affordable housing.

ACT's Women and Community Services Minister Joy Burch said more crisis beds would not solve the problem if there was nowhere for women to move on to.