Gendered Hardships when Disasters Hit: Deconstructing Gender Inequality in Banda Aceh and Haiti

• In Event: 254 - Section on Environment and Technology Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 11. Flooding and Disaster Vulnerability

Abstract

Just after the Indian Ocean Tsunami, then U.N. Secretary General, Kofi Annan, stated, “women and men experience the same hardships when disasters hit.” Such a statement is patently untrue. Women bear a greater burden when natural and technological disasters occur. In third world countries, this burden is magnified in ways that are unimaginable in industrialized nations, as post-disaster third-world women find themselves lacking access to food for themselves and their children, more at risk for physical (domestic) violence, having lower status than men for temporary and permanent post-disaster housing, and lacking education for both themselves and their female children. This paper draws upon Geertzian theory in socio-anthropology (thick description and interpretive contexts), and presents a comparative historical analysis of these post-disaster gendered issues in two specific non-Western disaster zones: 1) immediately following the Banda Aceh, Indonesia tsunami in December, 2004; and 2) immediately following the Haitian earthquake in January, 2010.

Author

• Dana M. Greene, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill