Regional Meeting

Theme

IDNDR news

Insight

duryog nivaran

AUDMP - making cities safer

From the grassroots

Upcoming ADPC training programs

Bookmarks

WWW Sites

The following are a few recent publications which may be of interest to our readers. ADPC Information and Research section can offer assistance in locating these publications.

GENDER AND DISASTERS

The Gendered Terrain of Disaster: Through Women's Eyes. Ed. Elaine Enarson and Betty Hearn Morrow. Forthcoming spring 1998. Greenwood Publishing Group, 88 Post Road West, P.O. Box 5007, Westport,CT 06881, USA; Tel: (1) (203) 226-3571; Fax: (1) (203) 222-1502.

A collection of primarily original work on gender and disaster from the US, Australia, Scotland, the Philippines, Pakistan, Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. Section I includes theoretical critiques of existing literature. In Section 11, contributors address household composition, age, domestic violence, and economic status in the social construction of gendered vulnerability. Section III offers case studies of women responders, including grassroots organizing in Miami, Australian accounts of women fighting bushfire, flood, and organizational gender bias, gender-aware community mitigation in Pakistan, women's responses to a recent Mexican earthquake, and several first-person narrative accounts. The conclusion identifies practical steps toward more gendered disaster practice, policy, and research.

Natural Hazards Observer Vol. xxi, No. 5. A publication of the Natural Hazards Research and Applications Information Center. May 1997. US$ 2.00 plus shipping and handling. Order from Natural Hazards Research and Applications Information Center, Institute of Behavioral Science # 6, University of Colorado at Boulder, Campus Box 482, Boulder, Colorado 80309-0482, USA. Also available on the Natural Hazard Center's Web site-- please refer to the WWWsites section of this issue. See description of this special issue of the Natural Hazards Observer in the WWWsites section of this issue.

DHA News No. 22. A publication of the United Nations Department of Humanitarian Affairs. April/May 1997. May be requested from: UN-DHA, Palais des Nations, CH-1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland. Also available on the Reliefweb Web site-- please refer to the WWW sites section of this issue. See description of this special issue of the DHA News in the WWW sites section of this issue.

See description of this special issue of the DHA News in the WWW sites section of this issue. Women and Drought. An occasional paper published by the Intermediate Technology. March 1997. 7pp. May be requested from: ITDG Ltd. Myson House, Railway Terrace, Rugby, CV21 3HT, UK. E-mail: enquiries@itdg.org.uk

Parts of the State of Gujarat, on India's west coast, are dry and drought-prone. This paper contains the stories of four poor Gujarati women, collected and translated by the Disaster Mitigation Institute (DMI) in Ahmedabad. The stories show the effects of drought on women and their families, and how they have tried to overcome its impact. These stories present the views of "victims" of disasters. These stories are also life stories that put events like droughts into the context of hardships - especially the economic hardships - of everyday life. They also illustrate very clearly the particular problems faced by women, in both normal and extreme circumstances.

STOP Disasters, No, 24. A publication of the International Decade of Natural Disaster Reduction (IDNDR) Secretariat. Spring 1995. May be requested from: the IDNDR Secretariat, Palais des Nations, CH-1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland. Tel: (41) (22) 798-6894; Fax: (41) (22) 733-8695.

This issue of STOP Disasters pivots around IDNDR's 1995 focus on women and children in their roles as active contributors to long-term disaster prevention and mitigation. The issue samples the range of questions and types of research techniques which participants in the Decade use as the basis for effective action and policy recommendations. What adversely affects women's and children's abilities to reduce their own vulnerability to disasters? Why? How can this be turned around?

Women and Floods in Bangladesh in International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters. Khondker, Habibul Haque. November 1996. pages 281 -292. Write to: office of Hazard Studies, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona 85287, U.S.A.

Women and Floods in Bangladesh assesses the differential impact of flood disasters on rural women & men. Analysis of fieldwork & three-part questionnaires conducted in Phalia Dighar, a village in northern Bangladesh, reveals that floods affect rural women more adversely than men because disaster relief programs focus on starvation & disease rather than on economic recovery (i.e., loss of household resources undermines women's economic well-being). These issues are rarely considered because women are not included in the planning & execution of counter disaster plans. Thus, it is suggested that successful counter disaster strategies need to take gender into account, ensure the participation of women, & link crisis response & rehabilitation strategies to development initiatives.

Women and Emergencies. Bridget Walker, Editor. 1994. 64pp. US$ 12.95, plus US$ 4.00 shipping. To obtain copies, contact Humanitarian Press, 165 First Avenue, Atlantic Highlands, NJ 07715-1289, U.S.A.; Tel: (1) (908) 872-1441.

Many professionals who deal with development issues now believe that gender must be considered to advance effective and equitable programs. Still, gender perspectives are not well incorporated into disaster response and remain relatively unresearched and undocumented. This volume includes papers that address gender in disaster and development, putting policy into practice, gender strategies in disaster preparedness, the effects of drought on women, emergency food distribution, the 1993 earthquake in India and the problems it created for women, disaster preparedness efforts in Pakistan, problems encountered by Sudanese refugees, and women refugees in Bangladesh. [Excerpted from Natural Hazards Observer, a publication of the Natural Hazards Research and Applications Information Center]

GENERAL

At Risk: Natural Hazards, People's Vulnerability, and Disasters. Piers Blaikie, Terry Cannon, Ian Davis, and Ben Wisner. 1994. 298 pp. US$ 25.00, plus US$ 4.50 shipping. Orders should be sent to Routledge, 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001, USA. At Risk reasserts that the social, political and economic environment is as much a cause of disasters as the natural environment, arguing that mitigation is rooted in human understanding of vulnerability and action. the authors analyze "hazards that become disasters", famine and drought, biological hazards, floods, coastal storms, earthquakes, volcanoes and landslides. They also provide a disaster "pressure and release" model, describe access to resources and coping in adversity, and discuss principles for managing disaster recovery and reducing vulnerability.