International Women's Day 2024: Sydney Event Notes from Sophie Cooke
Women in Aid and Development 5 March 2024
About Habitat for Humanity
About Habitat -established in 1976, now works in 70 countries. Globally have to date reached 59 million.
Mission – a world where everyone has a decent place to live. Habitat is generally known for volunteers building houses, but programs have a much broader focus than construction of housing. We look at the whole value chain for housing. Eg access to land and land tenure, affordability of finance, availability and type of construction materials, labour supply chains, quality of house construction ( eg can it withstand natural disasters, is it habitable), maintenance and use of the home, and access to basic services (such as water and sanitation).
Housing is an essential driver for achieving many of the Sustainable Development Goals. Adequate and affordable housing leads to benefits in health, education and economic opportunities. The process of housing improvement is often a ladder out of poverty for families. These changes benefit the larger community, reducing inequality and building resilience against economic and natural disasters.
How do women fit in to this picture?
By 2030, UN-Habitat estimates that 3 billion people, about 40 per cent of the world’s population, will need access to adequate housing. Additionally, an estimated 100 million people worldwide are homeless and one in four people live in conditions that are harmful to their health, safety and prosperity.
While international and national laws increasingly recognize women’s right to adequate housing, in practice there remains a large-scale denial of this right. As a result of discrimination and inequality in housing, many women and girls live in insecure, undignified and unsafe conditions, at increased risk of homelessness and violence.
Drivers of women’s inequal access to adequate housing are varied – and solutions need to consider these diverse drivers. For example
In Australia - “Family and domestic violence is the leading cause of homelessness for women, while older single women are one of the fastest growing cohorts of people experiencing housing stress and homelessness. Factors include being single, unemployed, renting, experiencing violence, having lower incomes, superannuation and savings, as well as a lack of support networks.
In Asia Pacific, some of the same economic drivers exist. For example, women working in lower paid jobs and informal economies are unable to access housing finance or save enough money for housing. Other drivers include inequal land and property rights, exclusion from decision making at household, community or societal levels. Climate change and humanitarian crises also disproportionately impact women and their ability to access and remain in adequate housing.
‘The climate crisis is not “gender neutral”. Women and girls experience the greatest impacts of climate change, which amplifies existing gender inequalities and poses unique threats to their livelihoods, health, and safety.’ For example, women are more likely to die in humanitarian crises (including those caused by climate change). Women are also more likely to face insecure tenure and are more likely to be evicted or lose their property than men.
Applying a gender lens to housing is critical to ensure that the fundamental role of safe, secure and affordable housing in ending inequality for women can be realised.
While we know this, housing has received limited attention in gender studies as it is often considered a private issue. However, the current gender and housing literature highlights the crucial need to address gender disparities, enhance safety, empower women economically, and secure tenure rights.
How do we adopt a Gendered approach to housing?
We need to address the different drivers of housing inequality while considering the intersection of these drivers and vulnerabilities that different people experience.
Impacts of work that Habitat for Humanity is supporting across the Asia Pacific.
Female headed households and other vulnerable women living in improved housing and with better access to basic services such as water and sanitation, as a result of their prioritisation by community groups engaged in beneficiary selection.
Women’s improved land tenure security in contexts where they are traditionally excluded from land and property ownership.
Women’s increased access to finance for housing and home improvements.
Habitat’s MicroBuild Fund was the first housing-focused microfinance investment vehicle dedicated to helping low-income families. The Fund loaned capital to microfinance institutions, which in turn provided small loans to families to build safe, decent and durable homes – benefitting more than 1 million people with improved housing over 10 years. Aiming to increase access to capital for women in particular, 69% of MicroBuild-supported loans went to female borrowers. MicroBuild 2 will launch later this year, with a renewed focus on female borrowers and female-owned or led small and medium enterprises.
Women’s increased voice and agency in community and household decision making through their empowerment as members and leaders of community shelter, WASH and disaster risk management groups.
For example, in Cambodia we are using participatory methodologies to support communities in urban informal settlements to adapt to climate change impacts through community-led housing and settlement improvements. This approach considers the intersection between climate change, gender and informal settlements - an area that urgently needs greater attention.
Another example, our recently completed Water for Women project in Fiji empowered women, youths and people with disabilities to participate in the communities’ water committees by creating safe spaces to discuss barriers that prevent women and people with disabilities from actively participating in WASH committees. Through the project women were supported to take an increasingly active role in managing their communities’ water and sanitation.
Challenges
How do we build capacity within the Habitat network to better understand the impacts of our work on gender relations? Habitat’s existing monitoring and evaluation processes do not systematically and rigorously measure the contribution of our housing projects to gender equality outcomes. This reduces our capacity to demonstrate what changes in gender equality are happening as a result of Habitat’s projects. In the coming year, we will develop and pilot a Housing and Gender Monitoring Tool to capture gendered outcomes of our work. The tool will help to recognise effective practices which can be scaled up and identify opportunities to increase skills of project staff in gender programming.
We need to increase awareness that gender is critical to our mission and build the skills of staff across the organisation. We need to find allies and skilled partners who can help build this capacity.
Finally, we need to challenge and change perceptions about what a “housing” organisation does, and the importance of considering gender in this equation.