From the ground to the institution

the discussion of gender and housing in the São Paulo Court of Justice

Abstract

https://doi.org/10.1590/2179-8966/2025/88188

The aim of this research is to identify whether gender asymmetry is an element considered in lawsuits over access to housing, articulated by urban social movements, applying content analysis of decisions and recommendations from the São Paulo State Court of Justice, in the capital, between 2010 and 2020. Not all lawsuits have discussions, or are likely to have discussions, about gender roles. However, when there is a collective subject with a significant number of active women, and this is a recurring characteristic of urban housing movements nationwide, the justice system has a duty to observe them not just as numbers, but as a means of confronting the generification of poverty and inaccessibility to the spaces where political and normative discourse is formed. These are actions that resist, challenge and affirm certain relationships and ways of living together. Housing as a space for social inclusion and personal fulfilment is added to the aspects of social movement analysis, making it a challenge to apply them to legal and gender studies.