In November, Belgium will host the international symposium Housing is Caring. It will examine housing and the living environment through the prism of gender studies. The event is organised by the architecture faculties LOCI UCL and La Cambre Horta ULB, together with the feminist association ‘Angela D. Le Logement par les femmes pour les femmes’. It aims to facilitate a dialogue between care theories, the sociology of housing, habitat anthropology and gender studies.

The concept of ‘care’ was developed more than fifty years ago within American feminist thought. In Dutch, it can be translated as ‘zorg’ and ‘zorgzaamheid’. It encompasses the work that is done, whether paid or unpaid, in response to our vulnerability. Care allows us to understand the extent to which and how care practices for others and the environment – built/unbuilt, material/immaterial, human/non-human – unfold within a continuum of mutual dependency relationships.