The key finding of this report is that women with substance use disorder (SUD) are not a homogenous group. The women interviewed for this study had diverse backgrounds, experiences and needs, and provided different recommendations for improving addiction services. Services need to reflect this diversity, and provide a greater range of options, but all services should be trauma-informed and gender sensitive. While gender is an important consideration, it intersects with other identities, including class and age.

While participants reported diverse experiences of services, all expressed gratitude for the services they had received. That participants expressed an overall positive experience of services is important given the obstacles they needed to navigate in the current provision of treatment services.

• Most addiction services were identified as male spaces. The lack of women-only services means that women can either enter male-dominated spaces or search for less available women-only spaces. This presents additional costs on women’s time and resources.
• Some participants felt emotionally and/or physically insecure within services. Some were critical of residential and community-based treatment services which employed ‘tough love’ models. Some had felt unsafe in mixed-gender residential houses, because abusive partners invaded their space or men in their group were intimidating. Services cannot be trauma-informed if people feel insecure.
• Participants identified the need for recovery to be fun and/or that recovery was fun.
• Participants reported that the development of pro-recovery relationships helped maintain recovery, but new relationships could be risky and some found it difficult to establish relationships with other women of a similar age. 
• Most participants attended 12-step meetings (i.e. AA/NA) and found them useful. Some had struggled with the religious focus and misogyny of meetings, identified meetings as male spaces and/or wanted more women-only meetings.
• Participants identified mixed-gender and women-only services presenting different strengths and challenges, and different women need different services.