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Theme ...
Engendering Disaster Preparedness and Management
On that sinister night of April 29, 1991, the
cyclonic wind howled with frightening fury; the torrential rain flooded
the hut; She clasped her four little boys paralyzed with fear-of being
alone, of nature's wrath, of death, of the men outside! But she, a widow
steeled herself for her lonely struggle to save her family.
She ran into the blinding madness slipping, falling,
losing grip of her boys. Bruised, cut, breathless and drenched they could
not access the distant cyclone shelter. They finally reached the village
landlords tall sturdy home in the nick of time, before the overpowering
surge swallowed the rest alive.
In the hours that passed, her body wracked with
pain and numb with cramps, she comforted her clinging children, shrieking
from fear, hunger, thirst and cold. After the terrorizing night she confronted
at dawn, the stark horror of an all enveloping devastation.The hoodlums
she feared were out again looting, haunting women, not even sparing female
corpses.
When help finally came, she battled with big,
strong men in serpentine queues, for food, clothes, medicines, shelter.
Her household was on nobody's list of beneficiaries (which comprised male
household-heads), the relief organizations telling her they would consider
her case later. But she survived with nothing but her four boys begging,
pleading, scouring her surroundings and fighting for relief. When life
returned to 'normal', she eked out her living from door-to-door sales of
jewellery in her village.
This was Savitribai of Chandaliyapara, Teknaf,
in South Bangladesh, narrating her harrowing brush with death and her determined
fight for survival .In contrast to the larger than life, but incomplete
image of "women as victim", Savitribai's experience sharply foregrounds
women in disasters as active survivors and turns the spotlight onto the
special socially determined needs and capacities of this vulnerable section
of half the human population, till recently peripheral to disaster preparedness
and management practice and theory.
The Gender Blind Spot in Disaster Management
The 1970s and 80s have seen a major paradigm shift that frames disasters
as a function of vulnerabilities of communities and an integral part of
"normal time development process", rather than as exceptional
natural calamities. While conventional formulations, rightly critiqued
as gender blind subsumed women under the rubric of a "universal humanity",
thus invisiblizing the different impact of disasters on women and their
special socially determined needs and capacities, gender concerns continue
to be inadequately addressed in current disaster management theory and
practice.
Following the UN Decade for women 1975-1985, that made it difficult
for development theorists and practitioners to marginalise women's distinctive
experiences, together with the larger numbers of disaster casualties and
death among women, the "vulnerability" approach's designation
of 'women' as a vulnerable group and the insistence of international agencies
on addressing women as 'relief beneficiaries' women have gradually begun
to figure on the agenda of disaster organizations.
The treatment of women's concerns by these organizations however leaves
much to be desired for women are constructed as prisoners of their own
peculiar and inferior biology as 'weak and hapless victims' to be protected
by 'stronger' men. This is attributable to the gendered world view and
practices of these organizations that perceive assymetrical gender relations
as biologically determined and also to their historic links to military
and paramilitary emergency response. This approach leaves much to be desired.
It conceals complex interacting social processes that largely account for
women's special needs, vulnerabilities and capacities; isolates women's
concerns from mainstream social life and development activity; reinforces
existing gender role/ trait stereotypes; assumes that inequitous gender
relationships are natural givens and immutable and places women as mere
additives on the disaster agenda. It is imperative therefore for disaster
management theory and practice to weave into its core, 'gender' as an analytical
category and 'gender analysis' as a methodological tool (see Box: Gender
Approach).
Women's Socially Determined Vulnerabilities in Various Phases of
Disaster
Gendered development processes that marginalize women coupled with socio-economic
milieus that subordinate them, only sharpen women's vulnerabilities and
diminish their capacities in disasters rendering them more dependent on
men. This also slows down their long-term recovery even more than it does
for men. Thus disasters clearly have a different impact on men and women,
women being more discriminated against and forced to bear the heavier burden
(see Box below:).
Women as Survivors : Special Strengths and Capacities
Even less visibilized than vulnerabilities are women's capacities, their
coping mechanisms, survival strategies, local knowledge, skills and resources
that they in their socially constructed roles as nurturers, socializing
agents and as key consumers of environmental resources, bring to bear on
disaster preparedness, relief, management and mitigation.
Conclusion
Disasters thus provide an opportunity for disaster management theory
and practice to actively foreground and build on women's strengths and
capacities, leadership potential within the community, indigenous skills,
knowledge, and technical capabilities and to institutionalize such creative
non-traditional interventions. Possible initiatives by disaster organizations
in this direction are the (a) recruitment of more gender sensitive female
managers and field staff (b)provision of their existing women and male
staff with gender sensitive training (c) engaging of women gender planning
and development specialists Such engendering of the central paradigms of
development and disasters would contribute to gender justice in disaster
response, enhance women's capacities as survivors; and ensure their long-term
empowerment, thus enhancing sustainable development of their communities.
| Documented evidence shows that that the largest number of disaster
casualties and deaths occur among women, children and the aged. Here we
examine the socially determined vulnerabilities of women and the basis
for this in three phases - before, during and after a disaster - Drawing
upon experiences from the Bangladesh cyclone of 1991.
Before Disaster
In the '91 cyclone, warning signals did not reach large numbers of women
within the home or homestead who died as a result. In a highly sex-segregated
society, warning information was transmitted by males to males in public
spaces where males congregated on the assumption that this would be communicated
to the rest of the family - which by and large did not occur. Those who
heard the warning ignored it because cyclones occuring after the 1970 disaster
had not caused much devastation. In the ensuing procrastination, women
who had comparatively less knowledge about cyclones and were dependent
on male decision making, perished, many with their children, waiting for
their husbands to return home and take them to safety. Those reaching shelters
found them ill designed and insensitive to gender and culture specific
needs. Not only were large numbers of men and women huddled together -
a rarity in a culture of seclusion - but the shelters lacked separate toilets,
water, toiletries like sanitary pads, thus reducing privacy levels. This
especially enhanced the discomfort of menstruating , pregnant and lactating
women.
During Disaster
In this cyclone, more women died trying to save themselves and their
children. Women found it difficult to scale rooftops and trees and swim
against the surge with their children - compounded by their sudden engagement
in vigorous 'masculine' activity which they are socialized to actively
refrain from in routine living. In a culture with a high premium on female
modesty, the dress code - the 'sari' - became a death trap for women, inhibiting
as it did, quick movement.
After Disaster
A generalized experience has been an increase in workload. Not only
are women engaged in providing for the physical needs of the family_ food,
clothing, shelter, fuel, water, health care_ but they are also encumbered
by emergency operations such as the construction of make-shift shelters
to overcome the marooned situation in floods and cyclones, constructing
rafts and scaffolds to remain above water levels, sheltering animals, protecting
their children and animals from snake and insect bites, taking special
care of infants and the aged, particularly if they are ill.
Despite this workload increase and the creative contribution of women
to the survival process, they were marginalized from access to the very
items they were responsible for providing the family with during rehabilitation.
Women were disadvantaged in battling with physically stronger men in relief
distribution queues and were hesitant to approach male distributers in
a sex-segregated culture.Assuming that households are headed by males and
that there exists an intra family equality and harmony of interests, immediate
relief and long term recovery support for income generating and housing
reconstruction activities were distributed to males. Women, even those
from women headed households were marginalized in the process. Moreover,
women in all these contexts report that male heads of households often
use relief items to suit their own needs and priorities, rather than those
of the household (e.g. men spending money to buy cigarettes, pan etc).
Land and housing allocations during rehabilitation are often tied to previous
patterns of landownersip. Women, even women headed households who are not
generally landowners are once again marginalized from acquisition of such
assets, these being instead given to sons (even minors) or brothers of
the male victim instead of the wife.
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The Gender Approach
(a) sex and gender are distinct concepts with the forner refering to
male and female anatomical differences, while the latter refers not just
to the biological but to the social construction of masculinity and femininity.
(b) gender addresses both men and women seperately and in relation to
each other;
c) ensuing gender relations characterized by male power and dominance
over women are not just biological, but largely socially structured, discriminatorily
impacting women's opportunities and access to material and non-material
resources of every kind -- land ownership, inheritance, education, training
and the like;
(d) women's special needs emanate not just from biology, but from their
subordinate location in society and rigid relegation to domestic and reproductive
roles within the family.
(e) every aspect of human life, including the development process and
disasters is gendered. Prevailing role stereotypes and gendered relations,
both condition and are inherently built into the assumptions of development
and planners (who are predominantly male), simply add women as a factor
to development Though gender and development are seen as inter-related,
they are treated as analytically distinct and seperate phenomena. Thus
the development process, avowed to empower women, disempowers them.
(f) being socially constructed, gender relations can be transformed
in the direction of gender justice, and partnership.
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Foregrounding Gender Concerns in Disaster Management
:
Some Present Initiatives and Future Directions
In recent years, there have been a number of notable initiatives in
South Asia that reflect a more gender-sensitive approach to disaster management.
For example:
In Bangladesh: active recruitment of female volunteers and female field
workers by the Cyclone Preparedness Program of Bangladesh and the Bangladesh
Red Crescent Society (BDRCS), respectively; formation of male and female
micro-groups at the village level engaged in decision making on disaster
issues; and training of women in the community on local initiatives on
disaster management.
In Pakistan: introduction of co-ownership of houses by husband and wife
in the reconstruction work after the 1989 floods by a NGO called Pattan
.
In India: introduction of joint ownership of houses by husband and wife
in the post-earthquake reconstruction in Latur (Maharashtra) funded by
a World Bank loan
Such initiatives catalyzed by community-based NGOs, existing local women's
organizations or external organizations assume special significance in
two contexts: (a) where formal, slow, top-down bureaucratic relief and
reconstruction may result in inequitable and unsustainable results, failing
to address the felt needs of vulnerable communities, ignoring local resources
and capacities and in some cases even increasing people's vulnerabilities.
and (b) the paradigm shift away from relief and reconstruction towards
disaster resilient development
In highly sex-segregated societies such as fore-mentioned ones, the
induction of female staff working closely with the community of local women
and notions of co-ownership and shared responsibility of men and women,
help engender and enrich the culture and practice of disaster organizations.
More significantly, this unleashes a new social dynamics of women operating
in the public sphere and crossing their traditional boundaries, some becoming
role models for other women in the community-a possible first step towards
more empowering gender equations.
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