Women in the Production of the Self-built Space: Counter-conduct and Intersectionality [Las mujeres en la producción del espacio autoconstruido: contraconducta e interseccionalidad]

Women play a major but undervalued role in the production of their habitat, especially if this is self-constructed. They struggle to secure land tenure, attract services and public facilities, and manage resources to consolidate their houses. However, women’s direct participation in housing construction is reduced because it is a task reserved for men. The Limones and Luis Donaldo Colosio neighborhoods in San Luis Potosí, Mexico, share a story led by women who organized to build their homes and formalize their land. Using these neighborhoods as case studies, this work analyzes the way in which the layers of disadvantage that women endure in peripheral contexts promote the insurgence of counter conducts that seek to improve the built context. This qualitative work employed interviews, perceptual instruments, and temporal schemes, to collect participants’ narratives. Main findings suggest that, through acts of resistance, the women in these neighborhoods moved between the political and the ethical to participate in the production of the city, conquer the parochial sphere, make themselves heard in the public sphere, associate with other women, negotiate their roles, and reinforce their self-concept to proclaim themselves as self-help builders. © 2022, Universidad de Chile, Instituto de la Vivienda. All rights reserved.

counter-conduct; intersectionality; San Luis Potosí (Mexico); self-help construction; women

VIVO