Housing Women

Description

Presents a comprehensive examination of women's relationship to housing as consumers and managers of housing services. The book begins with a discussion of women's experience as buyers of property and users of housing services. Income differentials, the dominance of the needs of the nuclear family and the ways in which housing allocations policies often discriminate against women are examined in detail. Subsequent discussion looks at women as producers of housing and assesses the structures within which they have to work. Much literature to date has portrayed women as passive recipients of services and victims of discrimination, but this shows the very active role women have played, for example in housing protest movements. The possibility of new housing forms are considered, which would challenge traditional gender assumptions and be more attractive to women. The contributors - all of whom have real-life experiences of the problems women face - make policy recommendations necessary to the creation of affordable housing, employment and training agencies to ensure better equal opportunity policies. Marion Brion, Independent Consultant; Veronica Coatham, University of Central England; Jane Drake, Sheffield Hallam University; Perminder Dhillon; Anne Douglas, David Gray Soli