Housing Precarity among Marginalized Women in Neoliberal Contexts: A Systematic Literature Review

This study presents a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) investigating the lived experiences of women from vulnerable groups in securing access to housing within the ideological contours of neoliberal capitalism. The inquiry delves into the layers of exclusion, precarity, and structural silencing that frame their trajectories. The study identifies five intersecting identities among vulnerable women: (1) single women; (2) single mothers; (3) survivors of gender-based violence; (4) elderly women; and (5) migrant women laborers. Through a rigorous database search guided by predetermined selection criteria, fifteen scholarly articles were selected for review. These were organized into the five categories, each containing two to four studies. The analysis focused on thematic resonance and dissonance across the studies within each group, culminating in a synthesis that foregrounds recurring mechanisms of injustice. Discrimination, economic constraint, legal uncertainty, insufficient policy response, and the inertia of patriarchal cultural norms constitute the recurring barriers. Yet, these are not isolated misfortunes; they are symptomatic of a housing system engineered to serve capital rather than care. The review argues that redressing gendered inequity in housing demands more than reform; it requires a structural rupture (Berry, 2018). Berry’s metaphor challenges us to move beyond the docility of the “automated bee,” urging a moral and imaginative leap toward becoming “architects” of a just society. In this vision, housing is not merely shelter, but a terrain of political struggle, a space where feminist futures must be built not as inevitabilities, but as acts of design and defiance.