Vol. 3, No. 3 November 1997

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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.

Jean D' Cunha

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.

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.

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.

Jean D' Cunha

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