Urban Spaces and Gender in Asia by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030364946
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

6.5 House Hunting: Biases and Negotiations

Our research which attempts to explore the linkages between singlehood and home draws upon the three-pronged strategy of looking at space suggested by Lefebvre (1991), of looking at the dialectical interaction between perceived, conceived and lived space, to understand the spatial ideology of our society with regard to singlehood. One of the ways in which the spatial ideology can be deciphered is through the access or lack thereof to rental housing for single people. Every space is already in place before the appearance of actors, actors who are individual as well as collective subjects, inasmuch as individuals are members of a class/group who seek to understand and appropriate space in their own ways. Representational space is a “space as directly lived through its associated images and symbols” (Lefebvre 1991, pp. 38–39).

Most of our informants bemoaned the fact that their single status raised eyebrows or created hurdles in finding an apartment and once access was established the panoptic gaze of the landlords and neighbours created a great sense of discomfort and annoyance. The surveillance and suspicion were greater in the case of women who came from small towns since it was believed that having led a sequestered life these women would have a “wild phase” after experiencing the first joys of freedom. Most of them pointed out how most landlords assume a moral high ground when interacting with single people and also offer them unsolicited advice. They fear that single men would vandalize the place or single women will use it for “certain kinds of businesses.” Single women are also more vulnerable to harassment, as many of our informants including men admitted that.Sometimes they look at my beard and ask me if I’m Muslim. When I say no, there are no real problems. I’m assuming that a yes would create a lot of problems. But that statement is not based on any statistically significant data points. I think being single and living on rent is awesome unless you are black, Muslim, a girl or have pets or may be gay too. (Male informant)

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