Retrofitting homes for gender equity and wellbeing: a salutogenic perspective.

The relationship between the built environment and human health is increasingly recognised; however, retrofit practice continues to address health primarily through a pathogenic lens, focusing on risks associated with substandard housing conditions. Current retrofit standards prioritise technical performance, often overlooking the unintended social consequences – particularly, the potential to exacerbate existing health inequalities. Furthermore, retrofit policy and delivery remain predominantly carbon-driven, with insufficient attention to how interventions might foster resilience, social cohesion, and wellbeing at the neighbourhood scale. Psycho-social determinants of health, which shape individual's ability to interpret and cope with their environments, remain underexplored in retrofit assessment and practice. A salutogenic approach to environmental design, grounded in Antonovsky's concept of health promotion, offers a promising alternative – focusing on long-term health and wellbeing by supporting Sense of Coherence (SOC): meaningfulness, manageability, and comprehensibility in people’s everyday settings. This paper draws attention to gender-specific vulnerabilities, particularly those experienced by women due to socio-economic inequalities as highlighted by UN Women. It argues that these inequalities influence women's priorities in the home, especially regarding safety, autonomy, and control. By employing a phenomenological evaluation of lived experience within a small sample group, the study explores how motivations for retrofit are shaped by these gendered needs. It advocates for neighbourhood scale, place-based retrofit strategies that incorporate a human centred, salutogenic framework, recognising wellbeing, inclusion, and life course health as essential to sustainable and equitable retrofit outcomes.