Gender, care and the home

In this chapter we explore the evolving interconnections between gender, housing and care and the conflicts that arise when housing is both an investment and a place of everyday care. Our focus is on links between housing and care evident in the global North and in western, liberal welfare states. We show how in these contexts gender, the politics of care and the organization of housing systems are deeply intertwined, with the organization of housing affecting caring capacity and access to care, and understandings of care shaping the organization of housing systems. In the first section of this chapter, we start by defining care and home, before, in the second section, considering housing as a location for care and considering the nature of care that is performed within the home. The third section addresses the growing financialization of housing and its everyday implications within home. In the fourth section we move beyond understandings of housing as a location for care to show how housing is also an infrastructure that organizes the possibilities for care giving and receiving at a household and social scale. We end by attending to the gendered, classed and raced inequalities of domestic care and considering the possibilities of a more caring housing system.