Women-friendly housing: rethinking women's safety, welfare and security in medium-cost housing

Abstract

This research explores the importance of women's safety, welfare, and security in the development of medium-cost housing in Malaysia. The vast majority of women and girls face great anxiety and insecurity in an unsafe environment where women often being the targeted subject for harassment and violence, especially behind closed doors of a poor housing environment and condition. There is little emphasis on women's safety, welfare, and security planning and design in low-cost housing which is often overlooked by the authority. The lack of power, differences in lifestyle, and lack sense of understanding amongst the lower-income group also affect the security as the term 'neighborhood effect' is often used to describe the simultaneous presence of neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage with other social problems such as high rate of unemployment, and crime that consequently diminishes the security aspect in a low-cost housing complex. Therefore, the objectives of this research are to identify the needs for the emotional, social, and economic development of women in a medium-cost housing environment; to develop suitable program relating to the emotional, social and economic state of women in a medium-cost housing territory; and to propose a housing design that resolves the emotional, social and economic state of women in a medium-cost housing environment.