Women's experience of "gentrification" in Mount Victoria, Wellington (New Zealand)
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Throughout this thesis a feminist approach is used to explore, critique and redress absence or depictions of women in the city. Chapters one and two determine how women's presence or absence has been constructed and represented through a patriarchal perspective, firstly in urban social theory, and secondly in theory related to gentrification. Lack of gender analysis in discussions of concepts such as class, consumption, housing, culture as they apply to urban and/or gentrification theory is emphasised through inclusion of women's alternative experiences. The second part of the thesis centres around a specific area and the women who live there. Mount Victoria, Wellington, while undergoing gentrification, has its own unique set of structural and social interactions which impact upon that process. Theoretical concepts, along with discussion of history, photographs, census data and interview material have been used to set up the area as a relevant case study of gentrification as well as illuminating women's contribution to that process. Through interviews I sought to explore women's experiences of living in such an area and what it meant for them. The content of those interviews, while reflecting some theoretical understandings, also brought to the fore the way in which place and gendered identity are interconnected. Contrary to motives of economic rationalisation informing housing and location choices, women appeared more concerned with feelings and meaning associated with location, the way in which an urban identity and lifestyle (the public sphere) differed from a private and suburban identity and lifestyle. Theoretical constructs of space, place and identity, then, appear to be more suited to gender analyses of urban change, especially that of gentrification.