Becoming Female Homeowners

After four decades of housing reform,urban Chinese society has witnessed a sweeping rise in private homeownership that features the rapid privatization of the former public housing and the emergence and expansion of the commodity housing market.In the process of large-scale residential real estate wealth accumulation,most women are excluded.China’s housing study lacks a gender dimension.Therefore,this study focuses on urban female homeowners,and conducts research on the path and process of urban women’s acquisition of their own housing.This study uses the housing pathways theory as the analytical framework,combined with the market transition theory and the theory of individualization and family modernization,and analyzes the gender difference and inequality of urban housing property rights and housing assets based on the data of the Chinese Family Panel Studies in 2010,2016 and 2018,and describes the urban Socio-demographic economic characteristics of women with housing ownership;On this basis,this study uses the purpose sampling method to conduct in-depth interviews with 35 urban female homeowners,analyzes their motivation and process when buying a house,and elaborates the influencing factors and specific paths of urban women’s housing property rights acquisition during the social transformation period.The study found that the proportion of female homeowners in urban China has increased,but it is still far lower than that of men.The gender differentiation of housing ownership and housing wealth accumulation is significant.In China`s urban female groups,differentiation is caused by factors such as the socio-economic status of the original family and the transfer of intergenerational wealth,changes in marital status,education,income,occupation,household registration status and other factors.Only a few women can become independent or joint owners of house.Under the traditional customs and social norms that men are more likely to obtain housing,this phenomenon of women becoming homeowners is not based on tradition.Social changes during the social transition period and the integration of individual life experience and the attributes of self-owned house promote women to have three types of motivations for obtaining housing property rights: normative,instrumental,and emotional.There are three ways to acquire self-owned house for urban women:housing acquisition under the family’s intergenerational wealth transfer,housing acquisition through marriage or changes in marital status,and buying housing independently.Gender and class status affect the individual’s opportunity to obtain housing property rights.At the same time,the different housing paths of Chinese urban female housing owners reflect the profound changes in Chinese families in terms of living arrangements,intergenerational relationships,husband and wife relationships,individual lifestyles,and female consciousness.The gender inequality of housing property rights and housing assets constitutes an important dimension of gender inequality and social stratification.Paying attention to the issue of women’s purchase of houses is of great significance to the overall gender relationship in society.At the same time,the phenomenon of women buying houses under the background of modernization reflects the interweaving of multiple factors such as policies,markets,families,and individuals during the transition period,and reflects the changes in family and gender relations in the process of China’s transition.