10 years after Tsunami: The gendered impact of disasters and looking beyond vulnerability

At a workshop this week, someone opened their presentation, ironically, with “Please don’t raise Gender now, we’re in an emergency!” That summarises the usual reaction to anyone introducing ‘gender’ into a discussion, even outside of an emergency situation. Nevertheless, the decade since the 2004 tsunami has been a decade of learning and of consolidating learning about disasters and how to cope with them. Among other things, we have learnt a great deal about the gendered impact of disasters and in the words of the Hyogo Framework for Action, identified gender as a “cross-cutting concern.” 

In the aftermath of the tsunami, several reports and studies highlighted its gendered impact. The most striking gender difference was in the death toll - in most places, women died in much larger numbers than men. Their clothes, their long hair, their wish to save children and their inability to swim became factors, as did the fact that early warning systems provided for announcements in the public spaces where men are more likely to gather. But men were affected in gender-specific ways too. In spite of their personal losses, trauma and injuries, they were expected to pick up and participate in the physical reconstruction of the community. Their roles changed vis-à-vis their families, some choosing to remarry (placing adolescent girls at risk of early marriage or exploitation) and some choosing to take over household duties they had never performed before. The latter choice diminished the household income, and resulted in a chain of consequences that affected the life-chances of their children. Gendered impact also refers to the impact the tsunami had on minorities like the transgendered community, for whom no provision was made in the relief camps and who ended up homeless, hungry and vulnerable to sexual violence. 

Post-tsunami reportage and field studies also highlighted how people’s needs were affected by their gender. Women’s sanitary needs and access to toilets are the most commonly cited examples of gender sensitivity in this matter. The danger is that 10 years after the tsunami, although we read more about disasters and there is growing public engagement with relief work at least, we fail to go beyond ‘vulnerability’ when we talk about gender. 

Rescue and relief constitute the briefest, if most intensely engaging, phase of the disaster cycle. Prevention and recovery are ongoing, and must actually be built into governance structures and development planning in order to be successful. Gender sensitivity is essential at every turn.

A focus on vulnerability obscures our ability to see capacity and agency. Let me illustrate. For the most part, our idea of gender sensitivity is to recognise the special vulnerabilities of women—they cannot swim, they are encumbered by sarees, their access to toilets is poor and they are vulnerable to sexual violence. This view is important but it effaces other realities. Women are not just home-makers; in most communities, they are engaged in a host of income-generating occupations, from looking after livestock to growing vegetables and selling them to running food-stalls to preparing the day’s catch of fish for the market to transporting and selling the fish. In farming communities, they are accustomed to reading river water levels as they work their land. In areas where the men migrate to cities for work, women secure assets, handle the clean-up and rebuild their homes. This is actually ‘women’s work.’ 

When we are unable to see this, because we are looking to rescue women from their victimhood, we fail to support their recovery in a meaningful way. More critical for the community, we fail to draw on their knowledge and experience. The support provided for their recovery channels them into livelihoods we expect that women will be comfortable with—stitching clothes, making pickle—rather than what they have been doing before the disaster. This also extends to men and transgendered persons. Gender sensitivity means going beyond our expectations and preconceived stereotypical notions and choosing to see and make visible what people’s experiences, knowledge, needs and aspirations actually are. 

Rescue, relief and reconstruction are extremely important, but in my view, they are a job half-done if they do not leave behind a more equitable social order. Gender equality is integral to this. Being included and being able to participate meaningfully are measurable elements of gender equality. It is, however, not enough to be at the table, or even to get a speaking turn; what matters is whether anyone is listening. In post-conflict contexts, women have been included in assemblies but people leave the room when they are speaking. Reconstruction comes to fruition when all sections are included, all sections are heard and all sections have a say in collective choices and outcomes. 

When we ask about gender sensitivity and women in the post-disaster phase, people reassure us, saying, “We have set up committees everywhere, and there are women on those committees.” What we really want to know is, do they get to speak and is anyone listening to them?

Where women have been given the chance to allocate funds, participate in design and oversee projects, they have grown in capacity and confidence. More critically, their communities have become accustomed to seeing them in the public sphere. The women learn how to navigate the bureaucratic labyrinth and to speak the language of the market. There is a logical transition from participating in a reconstruction project or a self-help group to community leadership to active participation in the Panchayat and then political activity beyond. That journey is the ultimate destination of development work, and as a subset of that, disaster recovery work. A gender sensitive approach culminates in giving voice to those who have been marginalized. 

At a conference held soon after the tsunami, the suggestion that disasters were opportunities was countered by the question, “How many opportunities do we actually need to address the problems of a community?” Ten years after the tsunami, this remains a valid question, and given the number of disasters we have seen in 2014 alone, it seems that rather than vulnerability reducing, it is on the rise. This is possibly because we are choosing not to see and not to listen to everybody who might have something to say, nor reaching out to everyone who might be affected, nor tying in our disaster responses more generally to giving people a voice in their own futures. It is not that emergencies are no time to raise gender questions; it may in fact be that emergencies arise because we do not give gender enough importance in our planning and prevention work. 

Swarna Rajagopalan is a political scientist and founder of Prajnya.