The impacts of post-disaster spatial structure on low income women: The case of Düzce


Tezin Türü: Yüksek Lisans

Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, Mimarlık Fakültesi, Şehir ve Bölge Planlama Bölümü, Türkiye

Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2015

Öğrenci: HANDE CEYLAN

Danışman: MELİH ERSOY

Özet:

Düzce city had almost collapsed due to the two major earthquakes which affected northwestern Turkey in 1999 and afterwards, a rapid spatial process including people’s displacement from their pre-earthquake settings and placement of them to the post-earthquake settlements had begun in the city. These processes which affect housing environments are assumed to have severe impacts on especially low-income women’s lives in the long run as they are the ones whose daily lives are mostly associated with the housing environment. But neither in the level of theoretical research nor in the level of post-earthquake planning and implementation processes, low-income women were included. This thesis problematizes this gap and proposes an intersection in the fields of gender, space and disaster research. Thus it is aimed to reveal the relation between space and gendered social relations of low-income women living in three different post-earthquake settlements, by further exploring the experiences of them in the levels of household, neighbourhood and work which are represented respectively with private, social and public spheres throughout this thesis. To search for women’s daily experiences on the other hand, ethnographic research and feminist standpoint approaches are adopted and in-depth interviews with 25 women from three different settlements were conducted. As a result, low-income women are found to be affected negatively from the ‘man-made’ environment especially in the post-disaster context. It is believed that, with the data provided, the social inequalities in post-disaster living environments can be better understood to generate a basis for policy proposals in planning and implementation processes.