Life on the Porch: Marginality, Women, and Old Age in Rural Bhutan

This article examines the shifting status of women in rural Bhutan, some whom, while living a social arrangement characterized by matrilineal inheritance and matrilocal residence, can become seemingly marginalized old age. It analyzes occupancy trajectories against backdrop aging, loss power, traditional land tenure system, considering their linkages to transformation one’s home from secure inclusive an insecure disorienting place. Landlessness or “houselessness” is provoked not just capitalist relations; potential for marginality age also embedded gendered structures inheritance. The elders on porches nevertheless view dwellings as socially even they experience sociospatial alienation only larger community but own families. divergent situation intertwined with Buddhist notion karma.