Housing policies and the gender perspective: limits and possibilities based on the experience of Habitar en Igualdad.
Housing policies, inclusive cities, gender, Habitar en Igualdad.
This dissertation aims to analyze housing policies from a gender and sexuality perspective, focusing on cisgender women in vulnerable social situations and the LGBTQIA+ population. Using the Argentine program Habitar en Igualdad as a paradigmatic case reference in Latin America, created in 2021 in the province of La Rioja, the research rethinks public housing policies to provide dignified and inclusive housing to individuals historically marginalized and precarized by society. The theoretical framework is based on the intersections between architecture, urbanism, and queer studies, highlighting authors such as Judith Butler (2012), Michel Foucault (2002), Paul Preciado (2000), Monique Wittig (1980), and Beatriz Colomina (1992). The dissertation promotes a theoretical shift in architecture and urbanism studies, encouraging reflection on housing for cisgender women victims of domestic violence and the gender-dissident community. Additionally, it challenges heteronormative concepts within housing policies, seeking to deconstruct binary gender norms and heterocentric structures that perpetuate the precarity of these lives. Despite progress, especially in Argentina, significant barriers remain to the implementation of inclusive housing policies in Brazil and Latin America. The connection between queer theory and housing policies offers the possibility to expand the boundaries of conventional urbanism debates, inspiring new perspectives and broadening the scope of action for architects, urban planners, and urban managers in addressing contemporary urban challenges.