Because the problem is as a female, despite paying the same overpriced condo dues, I feel like I get almost no voice in anything compared to the males. And it is even more because not only am I female, but I am also a parent and that comes with an even bigger level of discrimination in a condo (well at least in the condo I live in).
I tried for months to talk about important issues impacting health and safety at the condo. Finally, I was just pretty much shut down by a former military male board member we will call H, who basically told me "he wasn't going to debate me" which is just a fancy way of saying I'm not going to listen to your voice or let it be heard. Which is a fancy way of saying female voices don't matter.
During that same meeting I emailed a board member who we will call E. I noticed H having the same kind of "I'm not going to listen to you because you are a female" conversation with E about something totally different". I wondered if it is in my head so I reached out to E, who was like welcome to my world.
And there have been some pretty bad things that have happened here. Let me give you an example (originally posted this on my Facebook page).
A year and half ago on the day of my dad's zoom funeral which I was unable to attend in person the building insisted on doing noisy non-emergency repairs in my unit. The management refused to even coordinate the timing of it with me or move the work one day. And yes this was also in the middle of the height of the pandemic. The assistant condo manager was completely rude about it too. No one from the building has ever apologized.
Honestly, I know a lot of females who lived in condos and then left to buy houses. In the majority of these cases, I feel like the lack of space was no more of an issue than that as females they didn't feel like their voices were getting heard and were sick of being bossed around by certain males.
I did want to ad a caveat in here, which I only realized I should while editing this. The key term is certain males. I don't even think the majority of males act like this. Many males are even excellent voices for women, listen to women as equals and have listened to me during a difficult period in my life. And the same males who demean females, also usually demean these men-the real men who aren't hiding their insecurities behind sexism.
So anyways, as much as I would like to stay in a space efficient condo, I will soon be looking for a house.
I still plan to be urbanist because I am lucky that I can afford to do so. And I plan to make the most of it by finding a home at least walkable to the metro, possibly purchasing an e-bike, and by taking advantage of the yard to grow food much more efficiently than I can in a sunroom.
But the larger picture is that unless the transit system expands and improves dramatically in the DC area it isn't feasible to have urbanism and to have all females and families being discriminated against in houses and still have good urbanism. Because even as it stands currently, there are going to be those who can't afford to do so and a limited number of houses by good transit and to be honest in areas where females and families feel safe living is limited and there will be many priced out who would otherwise choose an urbanist life style.
There are European cities where many families live in houses and excellent transit makes it feasible for families to be in houses and live an environmentally friendly lifestyle. It certainly could be here but there are so many obstacles to doing so. And to be honest some of these obstacles are challenging because when you bring them to some on the more liberal side that do want urbanism, there will still be fights and complaints about unions (aka metro workers union)-which in my opinion is pretty high up on reasons that the transit system has not improved. Or you will end up in a fight about not in my neighborhood. And I could go on and on. But perhaps these are topics for future posts.
