Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Publication Date

10-2025

Abstract

Though ostensibly gender neutral, the word “home” carries with it the baggage of gender, particularly womanhood and motherhood. In English, for instance, “homemaking” is synonymous with “housewifery;” in Filipino, the mother is described as ilaw ng tahanan (“light of the home”). Housing, as well, has a similar neutral connotation; yet, when we consider the impact of urban housing crises, women are disproportionately affected. In this paper, I want to grapple with the broader implications of the gendered baggage of the idea of “home,” its impact on individuals, on how we conceive of houses, homes, and dwellings, and ultimately its impact on social structures that govern housing. This paper takes as a starting point Iris Marion Young’s “House and Home: Variations on a Theme.” Young’s text is both an extended meditation on Martin Heidegger’s “dwelling” and on her childhood experiences of witnessing her mother–a widowed single parent in the late 1960s–being judged ‘incapable’ of raising her children because of her messy home. The failure to “make a proper home” (equated to keeping a neat and clean house), was taken as such a failure of motherhood that Young and her siblings were briefly put into foster care by the government–despite how their mother held down a job, sent them to school well-fed and well-dressed, and met all the rest of her childrens’ needs. From there, I intend to examine more deeply how the care and reproduction of the home as a feminized activity–relates to the global urban housing crisis, and more specifically to contemporary urban housing in the Philippines.

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