Gender, Housing, and Householding : Family Housing Strategies in Relocated Rural Communities in Urbanizing Northwestern China

China's rapid urbanization has relocated many rural communities and redistributed housing properties to relocated households. Existing studies have documented how patriarchal traditions have reproduced gender inequality in property allocation during this rural-to-urban transition, but little is known about the related family strategies through which properties are acquired, maintained, and transferred. Rather than seeing gender inequality as a static outcome of rural traditions or local customs, this study illustrates how rural families have managed housing properties in a fluid process of "householding" to sustain and reproduce themselves in an urban setting. Drawing on survey and interview data from the field site in Yinchuan, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region in northwestern China, the study illustrates emerging forms of family cooperation and tension that have reinforced and restructured gender inequality in access to housing, shaped by individuals' relational positions in terms of family composition, life stage, and socioeconomic status. Similar to the migration-stimulated householding process that differentiates villagers through their engagement in multiple jobs, the relocation-stimulated householding process involves obtaining, maintaining, and transferring multiple properties amid new pressures and desires in seeking security, managing risks, and strengthening networks of mutual support.