The young Australian feminine property investor: class, whiteness and heterosexuality

Abstract

The financialisation of housing is associated with the emergence of new investor subjectivities but, to date, little has been said about how these subject positions are gendered. In contrast, this paper brings a feminist lens to the topic through a textual analysis of the Australian financial self-help book, Smashed Avocado by Nicole Haddow (2019). By illuminating how Haddow’s self-narrated arc (or makeover) from fiscal failure to a successful property owner or ‘Rentvestor’ is inflected by sexuality, whiteness, and class, we highlight previously underexamined dimensions of property investor subjectivity as it is mediated by gender. Furthermore, we argue that gendering of property investment discourses in the feminised genre of self-help, suggests that the growing imperative of fiscal performativity is central to the (re)production of white (settler colonial), middle-class femininity. In concluding the paper, we call for more feminist attention to be given to the uneven geographies of everyday financialisation as they pertain to housing and feminist theorising on the home.