The Relational and Status Foundation of Gender Discrimination in Housing

Author: Griff M. Tester

Dissertation School: The Ohio State University

Pages: 149

Publication Date: June 2007

Availability:
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Access Number: 10829

Abstract:

Audit studies of housing discrimination have focused nearly entirely on the exclusion of racial and ethnic minorities. Much less attention, on the other hand, has centered on differential treatment by gender. Given what we know about gender broadly, gender inequalities in other institutional domains specifically (e.g., employment), and the gendered perceptions, meanings, and experiences associated with the home, gender discrimination within the housing context should be viewed as an important topic of research for both social scientists and public policymakers.

In this dissertation, I first review literature on housing discrimination and then integrate insights from a broader body of gender stratification scholarship. Resulting theoretical expectations center on potential status variations among women, relational and interactional processes of inequality as applied to housing in particular, and potential exclusionary and non-exclusionary forms of housing discrimination and their implications. My largely qualitative analyses draw on 204 verified cases of gender discrimination and 457 cases of familial status discrimination in housing filed with the Ohio Civil Rights Commission and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development between 1990 and 2003. Results reveal that women, like racial and ethnic minorities, face exclusionary forms of discrimination, but also significant levels of differential treatment and harassment after gaining access to housing. In fact, the preponderance of gender discrimination typically unfolds after women have gained access to housing, and the harassment is often sexual in nature.

In contrast, discrimination based on familial status, strongly impacted by social class vulnerability, is usually exclusionary in nature. Stereotypes and norms about gender, masculinity and femininity, and children and the family set the stage for these forms of housing discrimination. Importantly, however, gender alone cannot explain the discrimination that women face in the housing context. Instead, and as revealed in my qualitative immersion in to case files themselves, gender vulnerabilities in housing are compounded in significant ways by social class and racial disadvantages as well as family compositional patterns. I conclude by discussing these results, the generalizabilty of the inequalities uncovered for understanding gender stratification in other institutional arenas, and the implications of my analyses for both policy and discrimination law.

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