Women Walking through Plans: Technology, Democracy, and Gender Identity

"Every house plan I will continue to see as a VAC woman: walking through a plan, in my mind slamming doors and placing cupboards, figuring out where and how I would sleep, wash, cook, relax, and play with children in this situation." So wrote the outgoing chairwoman of one of the Netherlands' Vrouwen Adviescommissies voor de Woningbouw (Women's Advisory Committees on Housing, VACs) in her farewell statement. 1 The quotation captures many ideas that fascinate us: female self-identity, expertise in reading plans, a focus on practical household problems. How did the women of the advisory committees contribute to shaping living space in the Netherlands? This history of women's participation in public housing in the Netherlands is empirically rather modest, but we hope to show its theoretical and political relevance to a variety of issues.