Applied Usage of Exploring a

Gendered Way of Combating

Disaster

Prof. Ishrat Shamim

Institute of Disaster Management and Vulnerability Studies
University of Dhaka

Lecture 9
 DESTINY AND DISASTER

The gifts that we have received from the initiators of

globalization are anxiety, physical and psychological
trauma, poverty and inequality, hunger and disease and
value-erosion and illiteracy.
'The preservation and development of the environment
are continually being sacrificed in the name of ecological
modernization' (Dasgupta, 2004).
The affected people of environmental hazards and
natural disasters like Tsunami, Katrina, hurricane Rita,
twister, draught, flood and pollution are the economically
and politically marginalized group who are the majorities.
 Cont
For example, the tsunami of 26 December 2004 left an
estimated 8,010 dead and 3,432 injured in the southern
Indian state of Tamil Nadu.
The damage as a direct result of the waves, according to
a United Nations-Asian Development Bank-World Bank
Joint Assessment Mission is US$ 437.8 million, and the
livelihood loss is estimated at US$ 377.2 million,
amounting to a total of US$ 815 million.
For the survivors almost a million people (984,000) in
12 districts have become refugees in their own villages,
still living in makeshift shelters.
 Cont
The report of Post Tsunami Recovery Programme:
Preliminary Damage and Needs Assessment states: that
for every person directly employed in fisheries, four other
persons were dependent on downstream employment
(such as cleaning the fish, marketing it, boat repair,
transport of ice, etc).
But the damage incurred by the fisheries sector stood at
US$ 184.2 million out of a total of US$ 206.1 million.
The November 2004 typhoons in the Philippines
claimed over 1,000 lives and devastated the livelihoods of
many more.
The recent Indian Ocean Tsunami was even more
destructive more than 150,000 lives were lost.
 Cont
The recent death toll in Southeast Asia has mounted to
an estimate 120,000 plus, which adds a tragic dimension
to the blue print of 'Asia Crisis' and indicates a severe
global environmental warning.
The merciless killer tsunami around the whole Indian
Ocean region took lives of the humans with its hell and
high water.
The earthquake that unleashed dead tidal waves was so
powerful (hundred times powerful than nuclear bombs)
that it changed Asia's map permanently (The 'Times of
India, 29 December 2004).
 Tsunami deaths

The tsunami deaths our earth as yet experienced, is summarized in

the following table:

Year Area Death toll

1755 (Nov. 1) Lisbon, Portugal and part of Europe 60,000+
1883 (Aug. 27) Western Java and Southern Sumatra 36,000+
1896 (Jan. 15) East Coast of Japan 27,000+
1976 (Aug. 23) South West Philippines 8,000+
2004 (Dee. 26) Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, 1,25,000+
Thailand, India
Source: The Times of India, 27 December 2004.
 Disastrous situation created after Katrina
Susan L Cutter (2005) while writing on the disastrous
situation created after Katrina notes: 'It was just a matter
of when and where the major hurricane would strike a
large American city.

Two specific scenarios had been considered - a major

hurricane with 20 foot plus storm surge inundation
affecting the Gulf Coast region or a hurricane-induced
failure in New Orleans.
 Cont.

Both captured the imagination of emergency planners

designing training scenarios.

Hurricane Pam, the fictional FEMA-funded emergency

exercise for federal, state, and local officials in Louisiana,
encapsulated both scenarios.
Hurricane Katrina played them out in real time.
 Hurricanes aftermath response
Analysis of the social consequences of the disaster
underscore the achievement and glory of globalization.

Inadequate response to the hurricane's aftermath are

not just about failures in emergency response at the local,
state and federal levels or failures in the overall
emergency management system.

They are also about failures of the social support

systems for America's impoverished - the largely invisible
inner city poor.
 Disaster Scenario

The world is facing disasters with increasing frequency

and intensity - natural and man-made - that has had
devastating impacts.
As reported by the secretariat of the International
Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR), the last ten years
have seen 478,100 people killed, more than 2.5 billion
people affected and about US$ 690 billion in economic
losses.
Disasters triggered by hydro-meteorological hazards
amounted for 97 percent of the total people affected by
disasters, and 60 percent of the total economic losses.
 Cyclone Aila
A severe cyclonic storm named Aila battered the state
of West Bengal in India for six hours on 25 May 2009.

Cyclone Aila hit the border region of India and

Bangladesh.

Many rivers in the massive delta region left their

riverbeds; seawater from the Indian Ocean was swept
inland and flooded the houses and fields of 2 million
people.
 Cont
According to the BBC, half a million people were left
homeless after the water had washed away their houses and
their livelihoods.

200 people died; those surviving the cyclone are now faced
with the aftermath:

Destroyed and damaged houses, shorelines and roads

Saline water flooding fields and fresh water fisheries
Rapidly spreading diseases such as diarrhea, skin diseases,
colds and malaria.
 Role of women in disaster reduction

'Women have been seed experts, seed breeders, seed

selectors, and biodiversity conservers of the world.
The 10,000 years of human expertise in feeding us is a
women's expertise,' said, Vanadana Shiva, Founder of
Navdanya.
Though women have contributed significantly in every
walk of life, yet for various historical, social, religious and
cultural reasons and in spite of many constitutional
guarantees and legislative measures they are still depicted
as backward, docile and passive, as those who are to be
ruled over by men.
 Report of Rohit Jigyasu
It is evident from the report of Rohit Jigyasu, 'The role
of women in generating income for the family cannot be
under-estimated.
I could send an equal (if not more) role of women in
rebuilding efforts. I had some interviews with single
women, widows to assess how they have been coping with
the situation.
And I must say, I am impressed at their ongoing struggle
for survival, in the face of such a trauma.
A case history of a widow: Sarifa, whom I met sitting
along with her neighbour (who incidentally was also a
widow, due to earthquake) in the outskirts of Bhachao,
occupied by 'low castes.
 Cont..
Before the earthquake, Sarifa had two children, one of
whom she adopted from one of her relatives.
Sarifa's husband was very sick suffering from cancer and
she had to do hard day's labour to earn familys livelihood
and to educate her children.
In order to undertake a major treatment for her
husband, she had taken loan of nearly Rs. 2 lakhs from a
local money-lender (locally called durbari).
On the fateful day of the earthquake, while Sarifa was
away working as daily labour, both her children died under
the rubble.
 Cont
However, her sick husband survived the disaster, Sarifa
got Rs. 2 lakhs as compensation for the death of her two
children, with which she was forced to repay the loan.
She was left with no source of livelihood, but a little
money from the relief.
She decided to take another loan of Rs. 15,000 and used
her savings to buy a buffalo so that she can earn her
livelihood.
However that proved to be not enough to sustain
herself.
Meanwhile, her husband also died and poor Sarifa is left
alone living with haunting memories, loan and meagre
source of livelihood.
 Cont
Fortunately, one of the local NGOs, Unnati, provided
her with temporary shelter and Sarifa is still struggling for
physical survival after having undergone such an intense
psychological trauma.

While there is the danger that recovery efforts do not

recognize women's capabilities, and can in fact reinforce
or exacerbate existing gender and other inequalities, the
post-disaster period holds great potential for working to
build women's capacities and challenge gender
stereotypes.
GENDERED WAY OF COMBATING DISASTER

To create a data bank of socio-economic status of

women - community wise and disaster prone-area wise -
for having information that can directly help disaster
planners, management activists and others in the fields of
emergency preparedness, response, and reduction which
can locate the women for making them prepared for
disaster reduction activities. Gender issues cannot be
ignored or dismissed if we are truly interested in reducing
or combating disaster.
To consult women in design and operation of
emergency shelter.
(priority based ranking with 1 equaling the highest priority)

Cont..
To make deed of newly constructed houses in both
names.
To include women in housing design as well as in
construction.
Female construction workers should be trained in
the special cyclone-resistant 'rat trap' design for
buildings and low-cost dwellings, which enables walls to
withstand higher impact cyclonic winds.
To promote land rights for women.
To provide income-generation projects that build
non-traditional skills.
 Cont..

To fund women's groups to monitor disaster recovery

projects.
To enhance the capacities to undertake short and
medium-term activities in disaster management based on
long-term environmental considerations.

To collect and solicit gender-specific data.

To train and employ women in community-based

assessment and follow-up research.
 Cont..

Totap women's knowledge of environmental resources and

community complexity.

To identify and assess sex-specific needs, e.g. for home-based

women workers, mens mental health, displaced and migrating
women vs. men.

To track the (explicit/implicit) gender budgeting of relief and

response funds.
To monitor change over time and in different contexts.
To work with grass roots women keeping in view that the women
have insight, information, experience, networks, and resources vital
to increasing disaster resilience.

Cont..

To track the distribution of goods, services,

opportunities to women and men.
To assess the short and long-term impacts on
women/men of all disaster initiatives.
To monitor change over time and in different contexts.
To work with grassroots women keeping in view that
the women have insight, information, experience,
networks, and resources vital to increasing disaster
resilience.
To work with and develop the capacities of existing
women's groups such as experienced women activists and
NGO women.
 Cont..

To help and develop self help groups that play an

implementation role - in search and rescue, community
kitchens, grain banks, providing credit, in village level,
decision making, identifying livelihoods, forming disaster
task forces, etc.
The women should be empowered first.
 Cont
One of the recent innovations in empowering women
in poverty has been the increasing emphasis on micro-
credit programmes and schemes. These have become
highly significant in empowering women in poverty
through the mobilization of asset-less women to engage in
self-employment and income-generating activities. Micro-
credit schemes demonstrate that the poor women are
bankable and a valuable source for savings mobilization.
And certainly they would be the assets of disaster
reduction programme.
 Cont..
To make women empowered and to create equal
situation to express their power and freedom in decision
making in every spheres of family life, economic life,
cultural life, political life and social living.
To give priority to work with self-help groups so that
they can build houses for those left homeless, run
community kitchens, organize medical relief, administer
first aid and rescue drowning people.
 Cont..

To activate and motivate NGOs to work, especially for,

the pre and post disaster activities. The disaster-specific
NGOs with the help of women can be the great asset for
disaster reduction programme and facing the challenge of
disaster situation across the world.
 Cont..

These NGOs should be based on the philosophy of

inclusive policy i.e. these NGOs should be women-
centred. The administrative body should consist of women
and the workers who will be involved in action program
should also be women and they should be recruited from
the specific local zones of the disaster prone areas.
The women in these NGOs should be trained with the
disaster management by the help of the experts.
 Cont..
A special course like Disaster Nursing Course can be
introduced. The pass out nurses would only be recruited
in the disaster prone areas for nursing and caring disaster
affected people.
To show respect and regard to the women as the
starter and end product of Social and Economic
Development.
To help developing women's collective personalities.
To make women aware that women's participation is
the true spirit of democracy.
 Cont
To mobilize local, national and global women resources.
To make women understand to organize and help
other women.
To help women form a group, get their voices heard,
their needs met, and their losses consoled.
To make a community survey of disaster affected
women about their needs and to boost their spirits and
to make blue print of disaster - combating policies
accordingly.
 Cont
Women are mostly absent from institutionalized
alertness organizations. It is only possible to explore
women's preparedness behavior at the family level and
neighborhood level.
To ensure the support of women's access to resources
and science-based disaster education.
To make people aware about disaster preparedness,
reduction activities and indigenous wisdom through
cultural programmes like folk dance, folk theatre and folk
song and puppet theatre that will be easily internalized by
the women.
 Cont.
To open a television channel both in national and global
level that will only deal with disaster related programmes
like disaster preparedness, mitigation, rescue management,
monitoring knowledge, alertness and awareness etc. The
programmes will be made for the target audience i.e.
women who, in the real sense of the
term - the capacity builders.
The basic disaster management course should be
mandatory in school and college curricula.
Introducing basic disaster management topics, lucidly
written with images and illustrations in non-formal
education.
 Cont.
To prepare action oriented policy and research oriented
applied schemes for using knowledge about women
power, work, and employment in environmental disasters.
It is true that women are key economic players all the
way through the disaster cycle of preparedness, alleviation,
aid, reconstruction and emotional relief.
To set up community-wise Food Bank or Grain Bank
taking a cluster of disaster prone villages with the monthly
contributions of the villagers or people of disaster prone
areas which will serve the relief work in post-disaster
situation.
 Cont.
To set up Medicine and Community Blood Bank.

To make arrangement for lifesaving drugs, boats, etc. by

the villagers with the donation of the community people
and other state level, national level and global funding
agencies.