Cover page
Preface
Introduction

	Context
Feminism
Feminist Research
Housing and Feminism
Self Build Housing

	Method
Sample
Process
Analysis

	Case Studies
Marion
Pam
May
Carol
Jan
K
Tashe

	Findings
Personal Background
Community
Training and Technical
Land Policies
Institutional Support
Shelter and Service
Planning and Design
Building Materials

	Conclusions
Summary
Recommendations
Research

Feminism
Academia has fostered many diverse strands of feminist theory. The flowering of Women's Studies, Gender Studies and Feminist Studies has spread the seed of feminism on the wind; it has taken root in virtually every area of the academy.

My feminism comes from my experience of life as a woman, having witnessed first hand or survived many of the abuses women suffer. My development of a feminist consciousness has been formative in my understanding of the built environment. It has been my experience as a single parent and tenant in the public and private rental markets that helped me develop the determination to take up my girlhood ambition of the study of architecture. I have subscribed to feminist scholarship's inconcludable task of narrowing the gap between women's experiences and what is written of them.

Feminism has been criticised from within and without for excluding all but middle class white women, and considering only their needs. There are disputes internal to feminism over the movement's aims and who real feminists are. (Denfield, 1995) This movement is part of the broader women's movement which includes many women who reject some other feminists or even the very label feminist. Feminism is neither homogeneous or monolithic.

This project draws upon several feminist traditions. It builds upon the work of: socialist feminists attempting to understand women's material conditions, liberal feminists' in their commitment to equal opportunity, radical feminists' in recognising that the personal is political, and anarcha-feminists' who are committed to "women working individually and in small groups" to create alternatives to the present systems. (Kramerae and Treichler 1985)

In a country where home ownership is the dominant form of tenure, where women are severely disadvantaged in terms of access to employment, where women earn on average about two thirds as much as men, questions of gender are intimately tied to those of housing.