The new term is upon us! Come join us on 22nd October from 1-2pm

Hello everyone!

We hope you all had a wonderful summer and feel rested for the new term.

We have now finalised our speakers for the first term of this year. We look forward to seeing you at our three talks from PhD students from three different departments! We are indeed very pleased with our multi-disciplinary programme and we hope to have attendees from a variety of academic disciplines.

And now to our first event… It will take place on October 22nd from 1-2pm in G09 at the Graduate School. We hope to see you all there!

The paper will be presented by Chris Foye from the School of Real Estate and Planning.

Title: “Why is housing more important to female satisfaction than male satisfaction?” 

Abstract: This paper is concerned with how the relationship between housing and well-being varies according to gender. By examining the German Socio-Economic Panel study (GSOEP), it demonstrates that women attach greater importance to housing as a life domain than men. Hypotheses are advanced that attribute this gender gap to gender differences in i) personality and ii) values. First, personality. By referring to a wide range of literatures including affordances, social role theory and gendered meanings of home- the paper proposes that women rely more on housing as a source of identity and social status, whilst men rely on housing as a source of economic status. Second, values. It is demonstrated that there is strong relationship between the women and the home in societal discourse leading women to assume the aesthetics and atmosphere of the home as their responsibility. Further examination of the GSOEP suggests gender differences in both personality and values may mediate gender differences in the subjective importance of housing.