Social business "Moradigna"

A study on the usage of prefabricated components and female labor in social housing

Abstract

The article presents the results of the first phase of development of the research project Design and prototyping of prefabricated components to enable social reforms on a large scale with inclusive labor for women, financed in the context of Edital Pipe FAPESP (2018). The project is developed by Moradigna, a project and construction office that promotes renovations to houses in precarious territories that present unhealthy environments, acting through a social business model. The findings reached at this stage point to the feasibility of developing non-volumetric prefabricated elements, in the form of panels with built-in electrical and hydraulic installations, of adjustable height. Due to their slenderness, they offer ease of transportation through narrow streets and, inside houses, through narrow rooms, corridors and stairs. They offer good ergonomic performance when handled by women. The nature of the challenges of including women as a labor force, in turn, is not technical, but social, based on gender prejudices that hinder their access to this vigorous sector of the Brazilian economy.