Towards a feminist approach for housing cases

Abstract

The dissertation is a qualitative study interrogating the extent to which gender has been integrated into South African housing cases. The dissertation has two sites of enquiry: housing judgments (the jurisprudence) and Public Interesting Litigation housing litigation (the lawyering). It first undertakes a contextual analysis of the multiple adverse impacts of a lack of housing on Black women living in poverty, and outlines the existing judicial responses to this intersectional disadvantage, before advancing a feminist conceptual framework to both critique the housing cases and to advance an alternative model to incorporate gender in housing cases. The dissertation proceeds, in Chapter 3, to use this feminist framework to analyse the housing cases of Grootboom, Olivia Road, Blue Moonlight and Dladla, identifying the gender gaps. From this analysis, the dissertation argues that judicial interpretations of reasonableness, progressive realization and available resources concepts from housing law and jurisprudence ought to incorporate a gendered focus. Turning to the second site of enquiry, in Chapter 4, the dissertation uses its feminist framework to interrogate housing-related Public Interest Litigation lawyering and to propose a feminist litigation strategy to incorporate gender. Finally, the dissertation concludes by drawing together the strands of the various chapters to suggest a way-forward on implementing a feminist approach in housing cases.