Gender Equality and Disaster Risk Reduction Workshop
Executive Summary - page 1
Honolulu, Hawaii – 10-12 August 2004
Executive Summary
Gender Equality and Disaster Risk Reduction Workshop
10-12 August 2004
From the 10
th
– 12
th
of August 2004, almost one hundred participants from
twenty-eight countries gathered in Honolulu for the international Gender
Equality and Disaster Risk Reduction Workshop hosted by the University of
Hawaii Social Science Research Institute and the East-West Center
(
www.ssri.hawaii.edu/research/GDWwebsite
). Disaster risk managers,
policy makers, development and gender specialists, emergency managers,
humanitarian relief workers, academics, activists, and community members
from around the world came together to strategize about moving from talk
to action by incorporating gender equality in disaster risk reduction
strategies. The workshop provided a forum for learning about gender and
disaster connections from differing perspectives. Participants traveled vast
distances to share their knowledge, experience, and insight.
With generous support from workshop sponsors, including the US Agency for
International Development (USAID) Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance
(OFDA), the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), the National Science
Foundation (NSF), UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction
(UNISDR), the Gender and Disaster Network, the East-West Center/Pacific
Disaster Center (PDC), the Center of Excellence in Disaster Management and
Humanitarian Assistance (COE-DMHA), the Public Entity Risk Institute, and
several local organizations, we were able to increase the size and reach of
workshop from the previous USAID-sponsored international workshop held in
Miami in 2000 (
See “Background” folder, “Reaching Women and Children in Disaster”
).
Workshop sponsors provided travel subsidies and support for sixty-eight
participants. Even though we were unable to fund more than fifty requests
from qualified, knowledgeable people, the tremendous increase in interest
demonstrated that gender issues in disaster reduction have become more
prominent.
Designed to promote interaction and dialogue, the three-day workshop
focused primarily on developing implementation strategies and actions in
working group sessions. Three plenary panels provided examples to initiate
dialogue and stimulate further discussion. In addition to the poster displays
and resource tables, flexible lunch sessions allowed time for presentations
for participants to share their experiences in the field. The scheduling
flexibility further permitted two important additional sessions to be added to
Gender Equality and Disaster Risk Reduction Workshop
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Honolulu, Hawaii – 10-12 August 2004
the agenda: 1) a time for dedicating the Mary Fran Meyers Award to
Madhavi Malalgoda Ariyabandu for her efforts in gender and disaster risk
reduction work in South Asia and 2) an impromptu meeting of the male
participants who decided to develop an advocacy statement on their roles
and responsibilities in gender and disaster risk reduction. In addition to the
more formal workshop structure, a cultural presentation during the first
evening’s reception added an opportunity to consider natural hazards from a
cultural perspective through
hula kahiko, an ancient style hula performance.
The workshop participants proposed actions related to six specific themes,
as well as a series of general recommendations for ensuring that actions
become implemented in international, regional, national, and local disaster
risk management agendas. An online coordinating group began looking at
the workshop recommendations to: craft a Call to Action for participants,
their agencies, and the broader disaster risk reduction community; develop a
Platform for action to be presented in Kobe, Japan at the World Conference
on Disaster Risk Reduction in January 2005; and, provide recommendations
for a group that would actively review the status of gender mainstreaming
risk reduction strategies. In addition, the workshop became the impetus for
a following activity to develop a Gender and Disaster Sourcebook that
provides case studies and examples of best practices.
Workshop participants proposed overarching recommendations to increase
gender mainstreaming and incorporate gender-fair practices in disaster risk
management in international and national programs, including actions to:
Incorporate gender and risk reduction analysis as a compulsory
element for all development projects.
Ensure that dynamics of disaster risk, gender, and environmental
analyses are considered in an integrated manner.
Highlight gaps in millennium development goals in terms of disaster
risk reduction and gender.
Guarantee representation of grassroots and wider civil society
organizations by providing resources and access to information.
Participants of the Gender Equality and Disaster Risk Reduction Workshop,
Honolulu 2004, recognized that we all have spheres of influence and varying
expertise. Women and men both acknowledged and advocated their specific
roles in ensuring gender equality. In an effort to pursue disaster risk
reduction in activities, participants agreed to:
Gender Equality and Disaster Risk Reduction Workshop
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Honolulu, Hawaii – 10-12 August 2004
Review the proposals and policies in disaster management and
incorporate gender as an integral part of policies and programs
(including the continuous and critical review of documents leading to
Kobe ‘s discussions and the resultant documents from the World
Conference on Disaster Reduction).
Take core message of this conference and suggested action points to
respective organizations.
Build alliances and coalitions or work with existing coalitions to
promote and build regional, national, international subsequently
platforms towards influencing Kobe discussions and outcomes.
Form an advocacy and advisory group (among workshop participants)
to monitor policy commitments made by our governments and
international actors.
The action items that emerged from the workshop build on a substantial
foundation of work and the experiences of participants who shared their
observations in the working group sessions. This document highlights the
developments from the workshop. Discussions and background materials
have been included as appendices in folders, since this document will be
distributed electronically through CD-ROM and on the internet.
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Honolulu, Hawaii – 10-12 August 2004
Why Another Workshop? :
Background on Gender and Disaster Risk Reduction
In the process of planning the workshop, the conveners asked the practical
question, “Why another conference?” It was important to consider this as
we asked participants to spend precious time and resources to meet in
Honolulu. The disaster risk management community concerned with gender
issues has met both formally in a number of workshops and virtually through
the Gender and Disaster Network. As the community has grown, it has been
essential to interact periodically to build momentum and gain support in
taking action towards engendering disaster risk management.
The "decade of disasters" vividly demonstrated that catastrophic social
events are gendered and that there is a corresponding need for engendering
global approaches to reducing disasters. Because gender relations structure
the lives of both women and men, with differences through the life cycle and
across cultures, the work of reducing risk cannot fall to men alone. In many
parts of the world, women have organized effectively to reduce the risk of
natural, human-induced and technological disasters, but these efforts are
not well known nor are they integrated into mainstream disaster risk
reduction programs. The full and equal participation of women and men is
needed to mitigate hazards, reduce social vulnerabilities, and rebuild more
sustainable, just, and disaster-resilient communities.
In 2000, the
Gender and Disaster Network
(see background information and
research at
http://online.northumbria.ac.uk/geography_research/gdn)
, with
sponsorship from USAID's Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance and the
Laboratory for Behavioural Research in the International Hurricane Center at
Florida International University, hosted a conference called "Reaching
Women and Children in Disaster." Recommendations from the workshop
encouraged gender awareness in the development of projects and improved
the networking capabilities of participants.
Recommended actions developed from past conferences in Costa Rica,
Australia, Canada, Pakistan, and the United States also make the case for
increasing gender awareness in disaster risk reduction, as did the Expert
Working Group consultation conducted in November 2002 in Ankara, Turkey
by the United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women. The results
of previous workshops stressed that mainstreaming gender equality is
urgently needed, but implementation of even the most basic change
strategies in education, policy and practice are lacking in most parts of the
world, especially with respect to mitigation and the reduction of social
vulnerability.
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In fact, with some exceptions, the resolutions and recommendations we
come up with are strikingly familiar. We have called for:
1. an approach to disasters reflecting everything we have learned about gender,
development and disaster.
2. an approach to disasters based on prevention—that is, on reducing structural
and social vulnerabilities; mitigating hazardous conditions and events; and
preparing as best we can for the extreme events that will surely come.
3. an approach to hazards, risks and disasters based on gender analysis—so we
have the knowledge and history we need when difficult decisions are made
about resource management, social planning and living with risk.
4. an approach to disaster balancing, if you will, structure and agency…that is,
an approach based on understanding women’s and men’s very real gendered
vulnerabilities, harm and needs, balanced with equal understanding of how
women alone and together, and women working with the men in their lives,
use their knowledge, leadership, connections, assets, experience, ideas and
resources to make life safer, not only at the community level but also in the
professions, sciences, and disaster management organizations.
5. an approach recognizing the diversity of the world’s women and the divisions
among us and the complex ways gender relations are interwoven with other
forms of social power such as ethnicity, caste and class, age, citizenship,
ability, and sexualities.
6. an approach that does not allow post-disaster reconstruction to rebuild
vulnerability but capitalizes on this moment of opportunity to make changes
altering the fundamental balance of power between women and men so that
women and girls are better able to confront and survive the disastrous
events of the future and help others do the same.
7. and, we have called consistently for an approach to hazards, disasters, and
risk that unites women and men in the creation of more just and sustainable
and disaster resilient ways of living.
In past meetings, we have identified the need for:
1. full and equal participation for women in decision-making at all levels and in
all phases and sectors.
2. leadership roles for grassroots women, for example in community-led
mitigation projects and gender-sensitive vulnerability assessments and
design and reconstruction of housing and social networks and the distribution
of relief resources.
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3. governmental and institutional support for capacity building efforts such as
non-traditional skills training and leadership development for women.
4. gender awareness training and curriculum development to promote
‘mainstreaming’ organizationally—and the targets, benchmark, evaluation
and monitoring that are the essential ingredient.
5. research on the root causes of gender-based vulnerability, gender specific
data and action research in collaboration with women’s and community
groups.
6. gender-fair practices and policies in the design, implementation and
evaluation of disaster projects, from mitigation and preparedness to relief to
rehabilitation and reconstruction and back to mitigation.
7. attention to practices and policies that reduce violence of all kinds against
girls and women in disaster contexts and protect and promote women’s and
men’s health and well being in gender sensitive ways.
8. gender-aware early warning systems and engendered awareness, education
and training approaches that bridge gaps of culture, literacy, language, and
other differences.
9. media outreach and collaboration to tell a complex story about women and
men in disaster.
10.family friendly and gender fair policies and practices in emergency response
work.
The intent of this workshop was to push towards developing strategies for
implementing these recommendations. While we understand gender issues
better after the past decade of hard-won lessons about women’s disaster
vulnerabilities and capacities, gender equality goals have not yet been well
integrated at the planning, implementation and evaluation levels in either
the private or public sectors of most nations and regions. Opportunities for
gender-fair practices and policies are still too often overlooked in
community-based risk reduction efforts as they are in government
initiatives, and these gaps make a real difference in long-term outcomes.
With attention to previous work and recommendations from national and
international workshops (background papers available on the website) and
develop implementation strategies, this workshop tried to find a place for
considering the next steps of implementation.
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Gender Equality and Disaster Risk Reduction Workshop:
Overview and Discussion Synthesis
Setting the Stage:
BACKGROUND and CHARGE for the WORKSHOP
The workshop opened with formal welcomes and a traditional Hawaiian
greeting chant,
aloha ‘oli. Dr. Elaine Enarson provided a welcoming address
that explained the purpose for the workshop, as described above, and
encouraged participants to push themselves over the three days to define
concrete actions. (
See “Welcoming” file for the full address
.)
The charge to participants was to:
• compare—and find difference as well as common ground
• criticize—and offer alternative ideas
• question—question others and be self critical
• disagree—and then perhaps agree to disagree and move on
• connect—perhaps for lifetime, a decade, definitely for a week
In the months prior to the workshop, participants were asked to provide
expectations for the workshop used in shaping the agenda (
included in the
appendix
) and commentaries to better focus discussions and working groups.
Participant comments raised the following issues and questions to address in
the workshop:
Rethinking the Framework for Gender Equality in Disasters
• What does it mean to call for seeing internally displaced families as an asset
not a liability? What would it look like? How could we help it come about?
• Do “stakeholders” have a gender? What does this mean? How do we
engender all actors—and budgets as well?
• What changes are needed and in what domains to require that emergency
management training include social vulnerability coursework?
• Why did women after hurricane Mitch in Nicaragua “choose not to” focus on
engendering the disaster agenda? And what are the unanticipated
consequences of women focused projects?
• How adaptable is the GROOTS model of peer learning and demonstration
projects?
• From the US, can the newly emerging risk reduction and all-hazards
approach survive the massive transfusion of money and political capital to a
quite different vision of Homeland Security?
Funding, Budgets, and Project Sustainability
• When we call state funding community development such as women’s
neighborhood groups, what do we lose—or is government support always
necessary?
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• Are micro-credit loans a burden or an asset to women in crisis?
• How sustainable are grant-led projects such as Working with Women at
Risk (a vulnerability assessment project several of us in the room worked on
in the Caribbean)? Why are some post-Mitch women’s initiatives still on-
going? How long will the Women’s Neighborhood Network Project in Ukraine
last? What sustains Women for Development in Armenia?
Equality
• Are quotas desirable, for instance among community trainers—always?
Never? Where and when?
• Is providing men with traditionally “female” skills in rehabilitation efforts as
important as developing a broader range of skills among women? Why don’t
we promote this equally?
Incorporating Gender Policy in Disaster Risk Management
• How do we move from a gender policy widely seen as “outside there, and not
right here”—safely lodged in headquarters, or an action plan but not
operational?
• Under what conditions or through what mechanisms can a guild or
association of voluntary women working toward preparedness be integrated
into local governing bodies?
• What can be done at the organizational level to replace the dualist approach
of disaster or development—with gender expertise firmly lodged in the
‘development’ camp?
Connections with Complex Emergencies and Global Social Problems
• How should we respond to increases in sex work and trafficking in disasters
and to intersecting crises such as HIV/AIDS? What connectio ns must we
make? Are there any connections to avoid?
• How do we connect the issues we see in complex humanitarian emergencies
with the planned responses for natural hazards? Are there commonalities
that can be learned through risk and vulnerability assessments and social
analyses for hazard planning that can be used in developing responses for
complex emergencies?
• Why do future emergency responders and planners being trained in the US
sometimes “refuse to acknowledge the heightened vulnerability of women”?
What is not being said or heard? Why do experts in disaster and risk
management dispute violence against women in North American disasters
and accept it elsewhere?
During the three-day workshop, organizers hoped to realize commitments by
individuals and organizations that will reach toward goals of implementing
actions defined in the working groups. Future opportunities are considerable
because gender is now considered an integrated theme for disaster risk
reduction---not just a sidebar issue. The workshop provided opportunities
for becoming part of a coordinating group to pose recommendations for the
World Conference on Disaster Reduction in 2005 and for contributing ideas,
experiences, and resources for the Gender and Disaster Sourcebook.
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First Plenary Panel:
INSTITUTIONAL and GOVERNMENTAL INITIATIVES
Moderator: Eileen Shea
Speakers: Marion Pratt, US AID Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance; Eugenia Date-Bah,
International Labour Organisation; Pete Bradford, Center of Excellence in Disaster Management &
Humanitarian Assistance; Claire Reiss, Public Entity Risk Institute; Ed Young, NOAA National
Weather Service Pacific Region; Allen Clark, Pacific Disaster Center; Sálvano Briceño,
International Strategy for Disaster Reduction
NOTE: Some of the prese ntations have been included in the presentation folder.
The first plenary panel consisted of representatives of governmental
organizations and institutions. Speakers were asked to consider their
institutional commitments to gender mainstreaming. The speakers identified
several key points on which their institutions agreed.
1. Gender equity is both an internal and external challenge and
opportunity. In order to understand and incorporate a gender
perspective in programs and policies, it is important for there to be a
good institutional gender balance within the organization to model best
practices.
2. We need to start with the recognition that place, context, and
culture matter.
3. Engendering disaster risk management should be viewed as a process
to develop an integrated program of science, technology, dialogue,
outreach, and education.
4. To address disasters through a risk management approach, we have
engaged in vulnerability assessments. In these assessments, women
and children are often identified as a population at risk because these
are populations of greatest poverty with less access to resources. It is
important, however, to recognize women and children as assets and to
reframe our programs thinking of these populations as opportunities
when we incorporate them into policies, plans, and programs.
5. Development should be linked with disaster risk management on
multiple layers, including individual, community, local, institutional,
national, and international levels. At each of these levels, it is
import ant to engage and empower individuals, communities,
governments, and institutions. Programs should focus on
empowerment at levels without forgetting the importance of local
knowledge and practice.
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6. To achieve sustained commitment and passion on the part of
individuals and institutions requires a shared journey.
Second Plenary Panel and Breakout Discussions:
GRASSROOTS INITIATIVES
Moderator: Johdah Bokhari, Women and Water Network (Pakistan)
Speakers: Kelva Perez, USAID, Gender and Water Alliance (Dominican Republic); Ayse
Yonder and Suzanne Shende, GROOTS (Turkey and Honduras); Sarah Bradshaw,
International Cooperation for Development (Nicaragua); Naomi Weidner, Independent
Consultant (Ukraine); Armine Mikayelyan, Women for Development (Armenia)
NOTE: Several of the presentations have been included in the presentation folder or in the
resource documents folder.
The second plenary panel consisted of people who work with a variety of
grassroots organizations in different nations. They all have extensive
experience in dealing with disasters from the perspective of local
communities.
The presenters directed participants to think about the relationships among
organizations in disaster risk reduction with local communities. Within their
presentations, the presenters asked participants to think about the
structures, organizations, framework, methods, and tools used in grassroots
disaster reduction. Presenters asked:
• How do you manage the risk of risk management? In some experiences the
organizations and donor agencies have approached relief and risk
management in ways that have been detrimental to the communities they
intended to help.
• What role could women play as communication intermediaries?
• Disasters compound social marginalization. NGOs are well positioned to help
bridge gaps during and after complex emergencies.
• Are women, by nature, more adept at finding solutions in complex
emergencies? Are men, in general, prone to violence?
• Poverty increases vulnerability, as do social and political systems in
transition.
• Already have shared experiences, but next step is to build on this.
• “Gender Mainstreaming” needs to be done in a way that actually helps
women, and not simply advances popular ideas within funding agencies.
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Following the plenary presentations, participants disbursed into six working
groups formed with mixed sector representation to discuss the issues drawn
out from the presentations. The notes of the Second Plenary working groups
have been included in the appendix folder, and the following bullets provide
an overview of common results from discussions.
1. What grassroots initiatives are you aware of that may be
similar to the experiences discussed by the panel?
• Community Vulnerability Assessments – Several examples and
variations of this method have been used globally. Community
vulnerability assessment tools for gender and disaster risk reduction,
including a guidebook for community training in assessment methods,
have been developed for the Dominican Republic and El Salvador.
Bangladesh has used vulnerability analysis in livelihood projects for
earthquakes that look at gender and age perceptions. The Cook Islands
have developed a Vulnerability and Capacity Analysis that assists
communities in identifying and improving capacity to deal with disasters
and implement sustainable actions.
• Gender Training – Gender training incorporated into policies of
government help to build governments that respond well to disasters.
Examples were provided of training in health systems that personalized
gender aspects and international laws such as CEDAW.
• Community Resource Centers – These centers have been set up in
Gujarat to help build resilience to droughts, floods, and earthquakes by
providing access to information that can be used for planning. NGOs
cooperate to help develop water resources and strengthen local rights and
access to resources.
• Environmental Action and Environmental Justice Groups – These
are an important component of reducing vulnerability, but have often
been treated separately from disaster management. Where these groups
have linked with disaster risk reduction initiatives, the programs have
become more sustainable.
• Participatory Programs – Increased participation of women,
community, and stakeholders has helped to create ownership and
sustainability of programs while ensuring that groups that are often
missed get issues voiced in the process.
• Women in Leadership Roles and Grassroots Organizations –
Programs that work with women’s groups in leadership roles demonstrate
that work happens more collaboratively across groups and in the
community. Programs that are developed with input into the program
work for participants and give a sense of ownership that helps to promote
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Honolulu, Hawaii – 10-12 August 2004
sustainability of initiatives. Women who have formed grassroots
organizations in Turkey have demonstrated organizational sustainability in
disasters.
• Student Leadership – Examples from Jakarta, Indonesia demonstrate
that students who have organized command posts to deal with flooding
and fires have been effective, and have gained community support for
their efforts.
• Microcredit and Microfinance Programs – These programs have been
effective in Bangladesh, India, China, and West Africa in helping to
provide entrepreneurial opportunities that improve socio -economic
conditions for women, and in turn improve their ability to cope with
disasters.
• Women in Infrastructure Development – Women in Mozambique have
been taught to build flood-resistant infrastructure (housing, sanitation
facilities, etc.) following the floods. The program took advantage of the
window of opportunity from the disaster to help build capacity during
recovery.
2. What have been some of the challenges of these initiatives in
your organization/country/community that will prevent
implementation of strategies?
• Capacity and Confidence Building – Examples from the Community
Vulnerability Assessment Guidebook showed that women had to learn that
they had knowledge that would contribute to vulnerability reduction.
• Community Focus of Programs Needed – Programs for risk reduction
have often focused on improving individual rights, property rights, and
land use issues that create competition rather than collaboration and
these programs do not help to build and sustain communities.
Opportunities to develop community-focused programs would ensure
cooperation in communities and build resiliency.
• Understand Traditional Roles and Use Appropriate Methods –
Before adopting gender mainstreaming initiatives, it is important to
understand traditional gender roles to prevent alienating men in risk
reduction.
• Understand and Balance Roles of Insider/Outsider Experts – There
are different situations where trust prevents outsiders from gathering
information through surveys and other situations where outsiders are
favored as experts. The experts need to be cognizant of these
perceptions and understand when local “insider” experts would be more
effective than “outsiders.” Balance needs to occur on international to
local levels, as well.
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Honolulu, Hawaii – 10-12 August 2004
• Gender Balance and Strategic Alliances – Men and women both need
to be part of disaster risk reduction strategies. It is a challenge to involve
men in gender equality discussions, but men are prominent in disaster
management organizations. Women need to be included, heard, and
respected in these organizations. Resources should be balanced to target
areas where men and women work best.
• Class Divisions that Cross-Cut Gender – Class divisions are cross-
cutting in society, but can be limiting because in some situations people,
even of the same gender, are not allowed to interact in meetings. This
provides a challenge for NGOs to be cognizant of their roles in helping to
provide voice to weaker classes and balance needs in society.
• Status of NGOs in National and International Government
Frameworks – There is concern that many governments do not take the
non-governmental organizations seriously and successes will be limited to
the influence of the organizations in society.
• Wasted Resources – When government and organizations do not
collaborate, there are redundant activities that waste resources and
minimize extent of influence in taking action. Competition for limited
resources often defeats the intent of the programs, where time is wasted
in competition rather than taking action. The opportunity to collaborate
can help to maximize resources.
• Cultural Differences and Separations – A range of factors may
prevent project implementation, including cultural differences. These
need to be understood before trying to implement programs. In many
societies, women and men are separated. Religious communities are
often separated. Including voices and widespread viewpoints become
more complicated when groups cannot work together because of social,
cultural, and traditional rules.
• Credibility and Trust – These become obstacles to implementation if the
communities and organizations do not have good experiences. These
must be built over time.
3. What opportunities might you use to build gender sensitive
tools and implement gender fair practices at the grassroots
and community levels?
• Pre-Disaster Planning Opportunities – Poverty alleviation programs
can be used to reduce vulnerability and risk. Promote economic equality.
• Increase Numbers of Girls in Science and Technology – Target girls
in science and math programs. Target the teachers to encourage and
mentor girls in science. Develop tools and curriculum for K-12.
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• Introduce Gender-Sensitive Tools – Look at traditional cultural events
and roles and find intersections with disaster risk management to use in
translating risk reduction opportunities.
• Use Windows of Opportunity after Disasters – As recovery operations
occur, there are opportunities to involve community in recovery efforts,
increase capacity, translate skills and develop appropriate tools, improve
infrastructure, and reduce risks.
4. What type of support or tools will be required?
• Funding – Risk reduction activities require sustainable funding resources
to afford staff and implement projects.
• Networks – Networks can help integrate skills and resources and
influence decision making authorities.
• Time – Long-term social changes require time to develop.
• Training – Training is needed at all levels (in communities, with policy
and decision makers, with media) and in different areas (gender
sensitivity, cultural sensitivity, and mitigation planning).
• Internal Resources – Strengthening the communities from within will
make them more resilient to disasters. These need to be planned and
developed prior to disasters.
• Communication Systems – Communication pathways are needed
among local governmental and nongovernmental organizations to the
national and regional governments. Communications tools need to be
aware of language and interpretation by communities.
• Economic Opportunities for Women – Economic opportunities and
support is needed for women to strengthen communities and build
resilience.
5. What would be a good measure of effectiveness?
• Ownership – communities take programs and projects and
implementation is continuous.
• Sustainability – Mechanisms have been developed to sustain the
programs beyond initial funding so that the programs become routine and
part of the culture. The programs survive even with the loss of key
individuals who started the group.
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• Transportability, Transferability, and Integration – Programs that
can be used to address multiple issues and link to pre-existing programs
would be more effective.
• Partnership – Programs that become collaborative and connect groups
from communities at local levels to upper levels of government and
decision making. Equality and trust in the partnerships are important to
maintaining and sustaining the programs.
Third Plenary Panel: PROMOTING GENDER EQUALITY in DISASTER
RISK REDUCTION – STRATEGIES CURRENTLY in PLACE
Moderator: Susan Cutter, Hazards Research Lab University of South Carolina
Speakers: Prafulla Mishra, Oxfam India; Mary Hope Schwoebel, Independent Consultant, USA; Alice
Kirambi, Christian Partners Development Agency, Nairobi, Kenya; Maureen Fordham, Northumbria
University, UK; Mehul Pandya, Disaster Management Institute, India
NOTE: Several presentations have been included in the “Presentation” folder as available.
The intent of the third plenary panel discussion was to identify specific
initiatives and strategies that have demonstrated success for integrating
gender equality in disaster management and risk reduction. The speakers
were chosen for the range of geographical experiences and for the programs
they have initiated.
In working with mainstreaming gender in disaster reduction, Prafulla Mishra
described the immense sociocultural barriers and high level of poverty. In
order to develop positive action, Oxfam began to incorporate a gender
perspective throughout the disaster management cycle. Gender analysis
was incorporated into plans and implemented through village task forces or
management committees. Oxfam recognizes that disasters provide excellent
opportunities for learning in order to improve future policies and programs.
Mary Hope Schwoebel had experience conducting macro and micro level
assessments for the India Government funded by USAID. As she related the
experiences to the Call for Action that will be emerging from the workshop,
she reminded participants to focus on the macro level initiatives. It is
important to get gender on the disaster agenda so that the broader disaster
risk management community recognizes the impacts and effects of gender
mainstreaming. It is also critical to continue to include disasters as part of
the development portfolio. Another important point to recognize is that
India has tremendous gender expertise, and these experts can be trained to
work in the disaster management sector.
From her experience working at multiple levels in Kenya, Alice Kirambi
advocated that women be better mobilized in disaster management. Women
have not been incorporated into policies. Women’s visibility needed to be
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raised at local levels to develop gender-based disaster management. A case
study in Kenya has involved women in disaster management with positive
results in improving capacity to cope with disasters.
Maureen Fordham presented a gender perspective of the Millenium
Development Goals (MDG)
(
www.un.org/milleniumgoals/
).
It is an important
advance that gender equality has been recognized in the MDG. Since
gender is a cross-cutting issue, there are goals that could be improved by
including gender considerations. The Millenium Development Goals should
be considered in linking gender with disaster risk reduction and development
policy.
The Disaster Management Institute (DMI) in Gujarat, India has developed
the Jeevika Project, a long-term livelihood project, that considers that
women are more often affected by disasters, but women are creative and
active in trying to cope with disasters. Mehul Pandya described the project
and provided an overview of DMI’s commitment for gender equality in
disaster risk management.
During the ensuing question and answer period, the following comments
were highlighted:
• Women are part of the problem and the solution.
• We need to first understand knowledge in communities to engender disaster
risk management organizations.
• We need to focus on positive targeting, not equality as the issue.
• Mitigation is slow. We have lots of good recommendations from meetings,
but we do not often see results very quickly. The strategies that are
developed are beautiful, but the frustration is the lack of implementation.
• Despite progress on initiatives, there is a large constraint: We don’t have
gender-sensitive decision makers. The problem with moving quickly is that
the power and organizational structures do not support this.
• We need to see more accountability for implementing actions. We need to
see progress. Benchmarks should be set for monitoring gender
mainstreaming initiatives.
•
It is possible to have the larger community respond to and discuss
implementation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) and create
positive action towards implementation by identifying ways that these goals
work with local objectives. (Example: The Cook Islands released a discussion
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of MDG in the paper in the local language and information was widely
disseminated, and this has helped push towards implementation.)
Concurrent Facilitated Working Groups:
STRATEGIES NEEDED and POSSIBLE
Concurrent working groups met for three hours on the second day of the
workshop and then reconvened on the third day to prepare the action items
presented in this section. The detailed notes for each of the groups appear
in the “Working Group” folder. The following section briefly reviews the lists
of actions recommended by each of the working groups.
Building Capacity in Women’s and Community Groups
Team Leaders: Madhavi Ariyabandou and Ngo Cong Chinh
Facilitator: Sara Ahmed
Recorder: Marieme Lo
Participants: Kelva A. Perez, Kathy Lynn, Saswati Chanda, Abigail Sines,
Debabrata Basu, Keiko Ikeda, Prafulla Mishra, Johdah Bokhari
1) Involve community at all levels.
• Involve community women and men in the academic work and research conducted in
their community. This will assist citizens to give back in a way appropriate to their
community.
• Support formal roles of community women’s groups and other community-based
organizations in preparedness and recovery processes, information gathering and
dissemination, and training.
• Respect and reward community ability to collect information, design, and implement
programs.
• Acknowledge and understand existing relationships within the community.
• Support community to recognize and meet specific needs and responsibilities of women
in preparedness and recovery.
2) Ensure equitable power in partnerships.
• Foster equal partnerships and equal goals among members in disaster risk reduction
partnerships across sectors and at multiple levels.
• Provide equitable distribution of resources and support within community.
• Ensure that grassroots women should benefit from and lead partnerships.
• Respect and incorporate diverse cultures and traditional knowledge.
3) Ensure resources and funding.
• Allocate resources so that partners receive benefit based on needs.
• Ensure transparency and accountability to local groups.
• Provide flexible funding to encourage sustainable, short and long term projects.
• Concentrate resources in the hands of the local residents – without imposing outside
interests/goals.
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4) Address root causes of vulnerability.
• Integrate issues of poverty and social vulnerability in designing disaster risk reduction
programs to ensure that root problems are addressed and increase opportunities for
participation from grassroots groups.
Communication, Training, and Education Strategies to Reduce Risk
Team Leaders: Elina Palm and Dawn Paleso’o
Facilitator: Christina Higa and Ed Young
Recorder: Emily Sjostrom
Participants: Claire Reiss, Kelva Perez, Monowar Akhand, Armi Mikayelyan, Anja
Reissberg, Margery Webster, Nazette Rydell, Maryl, Sharon Meilbrecht
1) Improve formal and informal curriculum standards
• Develop curriculum standards at all levels including the areas of science, technology and
economics, with an integrated and gender-sensitive approach to environmentally sound
and sustainable resource management and disaster reduction, response, and recovery
to positively change behavior and attitudes in rural and urban areas.
2) Develop gender-sensitive policies, programs, and laws
• Involve women’s groups and encourage, develop, review and implement gender
sensitive laws, policies, and programs that include land-use and urban planning, natural
resource and environmental management, and integrated water resources management,
to provide opportunities to prevent and mitigate damage.
• Encourage, as appropriate, the development and implementation of national building
standards that take into account natural hazards so that women, men and their families
are not exposed to high risk from disasters.
• Influence policies at national levels on gender and disaster risk reduction.
• Develop and establish mechanisms to influence policies on gender and disaster risk
reduction at the national level.
3) Improve management, leadership skills, and decision making with gender
awareness.
• Improve basic management and leadership skills and pursue gender equality and
gender-sensitive environmental management and disaster reduction, response and
recovery as an integral part of sustainable development.
• Ensure the full participation of women in sustainable development decision making and
disaster reduction management at all levels.
4) Ensure access to information.
• Increase and ensure women’s equal access to information and formal and non-formal
education on disaster reduction, including gender-sensitive early warning systems, that
empower women to take action in a timely and appropriate manner.
• Ensure equal access for women and men to information related to disaster risk reduction
issues.
5) Educate the media.
• Educate media regarding their role in disaster risk reduction and the opportunities to
utilize culturally appropriate mediums and effective communication tools (i.e. radio soap
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opera, risk management game board) to effectively warn and educate the public,
specifically marginalized groups, on disaster risk management in the context of
sustainable development.
6) Mainstream a gender perspective in educational and training initiatives using
nongovernmental organizations and non-traditional institutions.
• Encourage civil society organizations to mainstream a gender perspective in the
promotion of sustainable development initiatives, including in disaster reduction
• Target information and resources to non-traditional leaders of social institutions in the
civil society community (i.e. religious leaders, leaders of women’s groups, leaders of
men’s groups) to facilitate education of disaster issues.
• Use women and youth organizations at both the national and community level to
educate disaster issues.
7) Establish and strengthen cross-cutting partnerships and mainstream gender
in corporate society.
• Establish and strengthen cross-cutting, interorganizational partnerships with the private
sector, community-based women’s groups, NGOs, and government agencies.
• Mainstream gender into corporate society to ensure its full participation.
8) Encourage women in disaster management positions.
• Encourage women to enter disaster management field through equal access to training
and education because women are underrepresented in disaster risk management
organizations.
• Develop retention mechanisms through mentoring, training, and flexible programs.
Using Science and Technology Differently
Team Leaders: Deborah Thomas and S.H.M. Fakhruddin
Facilitator: Ashmita Gosai
Recorder: Niki Dash
Participants: Eileen Shea, Nicole Colasacco, Nina Minka, Cheryl Anderson, Nezette Rydell,
Faye Chambers
1) Increase participatory action research in science and technology. Promote a
paradigm shift that infuses participatory research and gender issues in all
disaster-risk reduction related activities.
• Recognize that community participation should be at the heart of risk reduction initiatives
and the development tools and technology in context with local concerns, using social
science methods and participatory action research. Trust between science and
community is essential for success.
• Link science to society and produce a range of tools that can be used for multiple
purposes. This facilitates innovation and application.
• Increase funding for participatory research through scientific funding agencies.
Required resources need to be made available to scientific agencies for participatory
research.
• Change reward structures in agencies, organizations, and academic institutions to
acknowledge applied and participatory research and promote tenure for applied
researchers.
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• Train scientists (physical, life, social, engineering, etc.), educators, decision-makers, and
the public to recognize that science and technology is a process of exploration, not just a
collection of facts and figures, by promoting inquiry science (teachers and students
engaged in “hands-on” science projects) and citizen scientists.
2) Recognize expertise from many different backgrounds.
• Recognize that a disaster risk reduction framework requires knowledge and expertise
from different backgrounds and from multiple scientific and technological disciplines,
multiple agencies at all levels, the private sector, nongovernmental organizations, and
local communities.
• Foster greater integration of local and traditional knowledge into disaster risk reduction
programs.
3) Continue to focus on recruiting and retaining women into science and
technology.
• Move women not only into the workplace, but also into management level positions and
leadership roles by empowering girls to pursue science and by increasing scholarships
at the higher educational levels.
• Increase job retention by developing programs in the workplace that recognize and
support unique needs of women and men (e.g. for flexible schedules, job sharing).
• Institutionalize mentoring relationships for women and establish support groups for girls
and women for engaging in scientific inquiry (government, university, NGO, community,
and private-sector).
4) Promote awareness about scientific and research ethical issues in disaster
risk reduction.
• Balance the benefits of science and technology with issues of confidentiality and privacy.
• Provide equitable access to scientific and technological information and tools.
• Promote equitable representation in science, policy development, and program
implementation.
• Consider how new information can change power structures within society and
communities so that social systems are not irreparably altered in negative ways.
• Focus research to understand these issues in the context of new technologies and tools
(including looking for lessons in technological adoption from other fields).
• Develop methods to assess ethical impacts of technological tools in communities.
5) Enhance efforts to share lessons from science and technology in different
communities, regions, and disciplines, and elements of the disaster risk
reduction community and learning from focus on successes and failures.
• Secure support for the Gender and Disaster Network (GDN) as a clearinghouse or forum
(http://online.northumbria.ac.uk/geography_research/gdn/).
• Establish regional hubs/chapters for the GDN (look to examples from other
organizations)
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New Partnerships and Collaborations
Team Leaders: Ayse Yonder and Suzanne Shende
Facilitator: Nugroho Abikusno
Recorder: Arleen Hill
Participants: J. Landry, N. Weidner, G. Guibert, E. Enarson, N. Abikusno, A. Yonder, S.
Shende, L. Orstad, A. Igrambi, A. Hill
The list of action items has been combined with the first group on Building
Capacity in Women’s and Community Groups. The notes for this group from
the first day have been included in the “Working Group” file.
Engendering Complex Emergency Responses
Leaders: Marion Pratt and Stuart Katwikirize
Facilitator: Sharon McHale
Raporteur: Karen Smith
Participants: Nga, Richard, Barbara, Marcella, Betty, Juniper, Sahana, Eugenia, Maigee
1) Promote recruitment and retention of experienced women and men in the field.
• Retain experienced people in the field by providing training, incentives and opportunities
that will reduce problems by having inexperienced staff. Implement a survey of
experiences to find out why people leave work in the area of complex emergencies.
There have been institutional-based studies, but maybe not an overall study for all in the
field.
• Improve appreciation of fieldworkers to maintain morale in this type of work.
• Develop a gender analysis and an analysis of studies that have been done on retention
of people working in complex emergencies.
• Recruit people who have humanitarian perspective and not an elitist view. Fieldworkers
and organizations need to understand and be sensitized to the context of people and
their situations.
2) Create institutional memory that promotes dealing with specific gender issues
on the ground during complex humanitarian emergencies.
• Develop professionalism in the field of complex emergencies in which there would be
institutionalized memory and opportunities for career progression once leaving fieldwork
duties.
• Bring in-country people into integration with disaster management, so experienced
people are brought into the field of complex emergencies.
•
Establish a standardized process and protocol to gather feedback from the field,
because data and information is rarely collected because the urgent nature of the work
with variations in staffing, involvement of multiple organizations, and temporal variations
of specified duties.
3) Undertake gender training activities and improve gender awareness with a view
toward long-term implementation.
• Promote gender training as a component of professionalizing the field. Gender training
is part of raising the standard of excellence.
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• Foster training of local people to increase their skills. Education in complex
emergencies is also an issue, but examples for this work could come from UNICEF.
• Develop ways to convince policy and decision makers and funders that having gender
sensitive issues is important by emphasizing security issues, including physical safety
and access to food and water.
• Increase attention, resources (time and space) and awareness. Donors allocate a
certain percentage to gender based evaluation and training. Maybe use the
consideration of “vulnerable people” instead of “gender”.
4) Engage in civil-military interaction and interface training.
• Provide a place for discussions concerning disaster risk reduction in civil-military
interactions. By engaging in mitigation actions resulting from these interactions, it is
possible to reduce risk.
• Engage dialogues, develop cross program interaction, and model joint interventions to
build clarity of roles and relationships between civil society and the military during
complex humanitarian emergencies.
5) Develop mechanisms for accountability, funding, and evaluation
to pursue long-term improvement in gender awareness.
• Educate decision makers and upper management. They need concrete
plans: cost, who will do it, etc and require details on how training will
happen.
• Establish a body that examines and monitors these issues during the
conference in Kobe.
• One of first steps is to convince leaders of NGOs that engendering complex
emergencies will improve their output.
• Provide funding for follow up! Evaluation is an important step toward making
Changing Organizational Culture and Structure
Team Leaders: Pratima Singh & Yolanda Gomez
Facilitator: Carol Amaratunga
Recorder: Bill Lovekamp
Participants: Giselle Addison, John Egan, Mary Hope Schwoebel, Darlene Williams, Niki
Rattle
1) Develop legislation ensuring disaster risk reduction is gender
sensitive and addresses social equity.
• Ensure that language is gender-sensitive.
2) Ensure that gender issues and social equity become part of
disaster risk reduction agendas at international and national
levels.
• View women as resources and critical decision-makers in disaster mitigation
and integrate women’s knowledge into policy and practice within all phases
of the disaster process.
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• Establish gender audits (overall assessments for institutions and
organizations of programs, budgets, policy, action, delivery of services, etc)
(www.interaction.org) that are standardized across all levels
3) Develop a global legal framework for ensuring risk reduction is
gender sensitive.
4) Improve structural arguments in national governments, local
governments and in non-governmental organizations.
• Link gender, social equity, and risk reduction policies and programs.
5) Institute a Global Fund for Gender-specific Disaster Risk
Reduction (GDRR) (in all phases of Disaster Management).
• Ensure national commitments and membership prerequisites
• Ensure appropriate resource allocation.
6) Establish mechanisms for gathering and distributing information
related to gender mainstreaming in disaster risk management.
• Use the Gender and Disaster Network to relate best practices.
• Provide good examples for the Gender and Disaster Sourcebook.
• Document best practices in gender mainstreaming in all regions.
• Establish checklists of accountability.
Research for Social Action
Team Leaders: Sudha Arlikatti and Lourdes Meyreles
Facilitator: Nuray Karanci
Recorder: Kristina Peterson
Participants: Barbara Flint, Patricia Stukes, Susan Cutter, Maureen Fordham, Brian
Linneker, Sarah Bradshaw
1) Develop a gender focused ethical framework.
• Develop a gender-focused ethic to frame disaster research with vulnerable populations,
especially as it pertains to women – with consideration of unequal power relations---
recognizing that gender: a) includes diversity of families and relationships, b) assists in
examining diversity, and c) is an evolving concept due to its complexity in context and
culture. This ethic should be incorporated into government, NGO, research and
community levels, so that it permeates all levels of action and policies and funding.
2) Ensure accountability to gender guidelines and frameworks.
• Hold all governments and NGO’s, international agencies and research bodies
accountable to existing gender guidelines and frameworks when commissioning design
and practice of research.
• Review the ethical guidelines of researchers to insure the extent to which they are non-
exploitive in process, practice, and policy.
• Ensure informed consent (what are the ethical guidelines of research) timing issues.
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• Do no harm! Do Good always. Love thy neighbor. --- These are the ethical basis of any
type of action and policy.
3) Fund research that addresses vulnerability.
• Focus funding sources on supporting research for social action, that address root
causes of vulnerability.
4) Develop indicators for gender analyses.
• Develop indicators for gender analysis that include the following: a) health, b) assets, c)
leadership, d) relationships, and e) poverty/economics. These should be understood
and incorporated into action research.
• Develop benchmarks and indicators to monitor efforts to integrate gender equality and
social vulnerability in national and international disaster risk reduction activities.
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Honoring Best Practices in Gender and Disaster Risk
Reduction
Madhavi Malalgoda Ariyabandu is honored with the Mary Fran
Meyers Award
Established in 2002, the Mary Fran Myers Award recognizes that
vulnerability to disasters and mass emergencies is influenced by social,
cultural, and economic structures that marginalize women and girls. The
award was so named to honor Mary Fran’s sustained efforts to launch a
worldwide network among disaster professionals advancing women’s careers
and promoting research on gender issues, disasters, emergency
management, and higher education.
This award recognizes people whose activities, advocacy efforts, or research
has had a lasting, positive impact in reducing hazards vulnerability for
women and girls. People whose work add to the body of knowledge on
gender and disasters; is significant for the theory and/or practice of gender
and disasters; or who have furthered opportunities for women to succeed in
the hazards fields are eligible to receive the award. Previous winners include
Mary Fran Myers, Natural Hazards Center (2002) and Betty Hearn Morrow,
Florida International University (2003).
Madhavi Malalgoda Ariyabandu received the award in 2004 for her tireless
work with ITDG South Asia in designing and coordinating research and
training initiatives on risk reduction and gender issues in disaster. She has
authored several books for disaster management in South Asia, published in
several languages.
In receiving the award, Ariyabandu commented on the importance of
disaster management initiatives that are coordinated with development
efforts. She urged colleagues to incorporate cultural knowledge and local
communities in risk reduction strategies.
Recognizing the best practices and hard work of members in the gender and
disaster risk management community promotes the concepts and
recommendations discussed throughout the working sessions. It is
important to document and share best practices. The award enables the
community to share in successes, as well.
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Roles and Responsibilities of Men in Promoting Gender
Equality in Disaster Risk Reduction
Following lunch on the second day of the workshop, the men attending the
workshop met briefly to discuss their roles in promoting gender equality in
disaster risk reduction. As they discussed their roles and responsibilities, the
men proposed the following statements of advocacy:
1) Men need to advocate for gender equality.
2) Men need to deliver gender mainstreaming messages to other men.
3) Men need to be full partners in gender sensitivity training.
4) Men as leaders need to be committed to bringing gender equity results
within their own organizations.
5) Men need to confront gender stereotyping, and create opportunities for
personal and institutional transformation.
6) Men need to recognize that women have lots of personal knowledge
and skills in coping with disasters, and that more women need to be
trained as first responders.
7) Tools and methodologies are needed to sensitize and empower men to
implement gender equality.
8) A separate workshop on men’s role in gender equality/gender
mainstreaming is needed, and sessions should be held at upcoming
meetings, such as the National Hazards Research Workshop,
Sociology, disaster mitigation, and other forums.
9) The Gender and Disaster Network should be used to share ideas, tools,
and best practices (e.g. examine gender sensitivity that was provided
to troops who served in East Timor, which resulted in a major
reduction in violent incidences against women).
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The Future of Gender Equality and Disaster Risk Reduction:
Kobe and Beyond
Call to Action
A voluntary Coordinating Group began meeting through online discussions
the week after the workshop to prepare the “Honolulu Call to Action”--- a
series of recommendations and implementation strategies resulting from the
workshop. This Call to Action (included on this disk for review) will be
presented at the World Conference on Disaster Reduction (WCDR) in Kobe,
Japan in January 2005.
The Coordinating Group has also examined the language in WCDR
background documents and recommended areas where gender
considerations should be incorporated into disaster reduction strategies.
These recommendations are being made through the national delegates who
will be attending WCDR.
Gender and Disaster Sourcebook
One targeted outcome of the workshop will be a Gender and Disaster
Sourcebook (funded by the Public Entity Risk Institute and the East-West
Center Pacific Disaster Center). A team of authors coordinated by Elaine
Enarson will research the user-friendly Sourcebook, designed for regional
adaptation and geared to planners and practitioners across sectors. The
team members will gather existing documents, brochures, case studies, and
success stories in various languages worldwide. The initial document will be
published in English on CD-ROM and the internet, to be stored at the Gender
and Disaster Network website. The concept is to have a working, available
resource that provides examples for implementing gender fair practices to
reduce risks from disasters. Several authors will provide a debut of the
expected format of the Sourcebook at the World Conference on Disaster
Reduction (WCDR) to gain further input from the broader disaster risk
management community.
Evaluation and Recommendations for Future Workshops
Most of the participants felt that the three days of working groups (Building
Capacity in Women’s and Community Groups; Communication, Education,
and Training Strategies; Gendered Science and Technology; New
Partnerships and Collaborations; Engendering Complex Emergencies;
Changing Organizational Culture, Structures, and Resources; and,
Participatory Action Research) did not provide enough time to get as detailed
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with the action items as we would have liked. Each working group,
however, managed to outline actions that should be undertaken.
The majority of participants felt that the workshop met their expectations. A
few criticisms recommended a tighter structure that would have enabled
more time in working groups to prepare better detailed action items followed
by well-defined commitments for implementation. The work of the online
coordinating committee does show some promise for pursuing action items
beyond the workshop, but the types of commitments that an informal
working group can push will not address all of the implementing actions.
Several recommendations following the workshop suggested the formation
of a formal monitoring group, but they would only be able to monitor
international decisions. The structures to address local issues and national
issues must be developed in those areas, and while the international
community provides funding, resources, and recommendations, it is likely
that the ability to address these detailed issues would need to take place in
the local and national arenas.
The opportunity to network with others in the disaster risk management
community who consider gender as a critical issue was helpful to many of
the participants. Participants overwhelmingly recommended future
workshops to take place in another location. The Honolulu workshop
targeted the Asia-Pacific region more than the Miami workshop, where more
participants from Latin America and Africa attended. Future workshops
could be in another country besides the USA, as there are a number of
countries working on gender and disaster risk reduction. In order to address
the specific details requested by participants, regional and national
workshops might be needed, as the structure and logistical constraints of an
international workshop did not permit much participation from non-English
speaking participants. To sustain momentum and monitor action
implementation, it is critical to have the face-to-face contact periodically.
The workshops provide additional support, encouragement, and motivation
that email and virtual networks lack.
These workshop proceedings have been distributed on CD-ROM and through
the workshop website,
www.ssri.hawaii.edu/research/GDWwebsite
.
This document
will eventually be hosted at the Gender and Disaster Network website,
http://online.northumbria.ac.uk/geography_research/gdn/
.
Participants are looking for opportunities to promote issues of integrating
gender issues in disaster risk reduction. The World Conference on Disaster
Reduction in Kobe, Japan in January 2005 provides the first forum for
integrating gender as a cross-cutting issue. According to the discussions
and recommendations of this workshop, promoting gender equality must
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occur at many levels and in many forums before we see real change and
implementation of strategies.
Individuals from the workshop have continued to promote the concepts of
improving gender equality in their organizations. The Call to Action appeals
to the participants in their spheres of influence and extends into the local
and national organizations. By working on multiple levels throughout the
world, the hope is that gender issues will be better understood in disaster
risk management, that organizations and institutions will develop gender
equity, and that gender-fair practices will be implemented globally.