Chin-Yen Wu
Graduate Institute of Building and Planning National Taiwan University
This article focused on rethinking of the meanings of home by exploring the lives of homeless women. I interviewed 14 homeless women by using in-depth interview method, and explored the institution and street lives of homeless women by participant observation from February to June of 1998 in Taipei City. In general, the concept of home is associated with a meaningful and safe place that a person feels attached to. This kind of description neglects the unequal power relationship among family members, and it ignores the true lives of women in the patriarchal family. The ideology of the patriarchal family is enforced by mainstream society in every perspective thus restricting women’s roles in society. For homeless women, home is not a sweet place as described in books, lyrics and advertisements; rather it is a place oppresses them and exhausts their energies. Running away from home breaks the myth of the ideology of patriarchal family. People should be against the broadcasting and reproduction of the ideology of patriarchal family in education system, court of law and media. Fostering alternative households is one strategy to break away from the status-quo ideology. Besides, trying to influence the public policy and letting everyone make his/her own choice is the way to make a more meaningful and suitable place to live.
Keywords: gender, homeless women, meanings of home, ideology of patriarchal family