My dream? To have a house.

Thinking about housing, city and citizenship of women in revolutionary Portugal (1974-1976)

Abstract

The Local Ambulatory Support Service (SAAL, 1974-76) was a unique initiative in Portuguese architectural culture, mainly due to the sociopolitical dimension of the dispute over the house and the city from the poor urban dwellers. Women were protagonists. I explore the motivations and contributions of women residents and technicians in the development of SAAL/North. Based on the television program Nome Mulher (“Name Woman”, 1975-1976), I ask about the relationship between the vindication for the right to housing and the construction of women’s citizenship in the context of participation in the SAAL. Methodologically, the list of the subjects addressed in the program are aligned with the episode Direito à Habitação “Right to Housing” (1976), in which a woman architect and women residents of SAAL/North speaks by their own voice.

The intersectional analysis of the group “women of the SAAL process” follows the discussion of sexual and racial structures from which Carol Pateman (2010) underlines the main obstacles to the construction of women’s ‘full citizenship’: in addition to the feminization of poverty, also the under-representation and the social and historical attribution of care work to women. These still have the potential to be understood as “radically subversive political gestures” (hooks, 1990). The right to housing is closely linked to the right to be an active part of society (Muxi, 2009) and the right to the city, a concept that has been expanded by feminisms (Pérez, 2013). I defend that access to housing – dignified, adequate and a place of individuality and rest – it is a pillar in women’s full citizenship realization.