CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2025
| Author | Fofanova, Elena |
|---|---|
| Title | Between Shelter And Rights: A Feminist Perspective On Housing Laws And Policies In Austria |
| Summary | This thesis explores housing legislation and policy frameworks respond to adequate housing for unhoused women. The core puzzle asks how Austrian housing policies recognize and address the gender-specific needs of women experiencing homelessness, especially in terms of safety, privacy, accessibility, and trauma-informed support. Guided by an intersectional feminist perspective, I combine a thematic analysis of national and Viennese housing laws, strategy papers, and NGO reports with qualitative fieldwork. The empirical backbone consists of semi-structured interviews with social workers, who implement or critique these policies on the ground, complemented by case studies of existing key programmes. The findings suggest that although the country has made progress in recognizing homelessness as a human rights issue, there remains a disparity in the implementation and experience of policies across different levels of gender, personal identity, social class, nationality, and so forth. Bureaucratic residency rules, fragmented support silos, and a focus on visible street homelessness systematically exclude women, particularly migrants and survivors of domestic violence, whose homelessness is more often “hidden” in precarious or unsafe arrangements. It calls for a holistic approach that not only addresses the immediate needs of homeless women but also tackles the underlying social and economic factors contributing to their homelessness. Key words: female homelessness, hidden homelessness, social housing, domestic violence and homelessness, policy implementation gaps. |
| Supervisor | Karin Lukas |
| Department | Legal Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2025/fofanova_elena.pdf |
Visit the CEU Library.
© 2007-2021, Central European University