The Foreign Service Journal, June 2006

the world lives in places where eco- nomic activity by gender has not been reported for at least the last decade. “The fact that we still have not fully mainstreamed gender issues amounts to the exclusion of women. We need to make women more visible in statis- tics,” says Maya Buvinic, director of gender and development for the World Bank’s Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Network. Yet despite legal and social instru- ments to protect women against inequitable aid distribution and hu- man rights abuses, and the existence of numerous governmental and private agencies capable of enforcing those measures, there continues to be an inor- dinate amount of gender-based violence and suffering among women in disaster settings. In September 2000, Human Rights Watch charged that widespread sexual and domestic abuse had left countless female refugees from Rwanda and Burundi physically bat- tered, traumatized and fearful for their lives in Tanzanian refugee camps. “When Burundi[an] women fled the inter- nal conflict there, they expected to find safety and protec- tion in the camps. Instead, they simply escaped one type of violence in Burundi to face other forms of abuse,” wrote Chirumbidzo Mabuwa, author of the report and researcher for the women’s rights division of HRW. For instance, Tanzanian police officers did not regard domestic violence as a crime. So, rather than investigate reports of domestic violence, police simply referred the victims to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and other organizations for counseling. Women in such situations are also frequently attacked and raped by police, military personnel, border guards and traveling bandits because most of the programs and ser- vices offered to victims and refugees are developed, imple- mented and administered by men, and sexual favors in exchange for food, relief assistance and documentation are all-too-common occurrences. In Disasters, Gender Matters When we speak of disasters, we need to realize that there are a wide variety of types, each with differing impli- cations for women. In broad-based terms, according to the U.N. Development Program, these include: • Rapid-onset disasters (e.g., earth- quakes, storms) that destroy homes but usually do not lead to displace- ment; • Slow-onset disasters (e.g., drought, desertification) that can have a severe social and economic impact, but also offer more time to formulate and implement relocation and coping strategies; • Human-induced disasters (e.g., armed conflicts) that not only cause displacement and loss of possessions, but can trigger more profound psy- chological trauma than do natural disasters; • Epidemics (e.g., HIV/AIDS), in which women bear disproportionate caretaker burdens; • Floods that cause displacement for short time peri- ods; and • Refugee emergencies (e.g., mass persecution, armed conflict) that cause displacement and extreme social and familial disruption. They also increase work demands, sex- ual violence and psychosocial trauma for women. Globally, approximately two billion people were affect- ed by natural disasters between 1990 and 1999 alone, stat- ed the World Health Organization in a 2002 report. Those calamities caused over 600,000 fatalities, accounting for nearly a third of that total. The study also found that there is a pattern of gender differentiation at all levels of the dis- aster process — in preparedness, response, physical and psychological impact, risk perception, risk exposure and recovery and reconstruction. Enarson says that the trend is toward increasing vul- nerability to such disasters. “We need to engage local peo- ple to develop local capacities and stop thinking only out- side experts can repair disasters. …We need to stop focus- ing on relief [and instead] back up and review the root causes of the disasters.” She points out that the impact of disasters is steadily increasing due to erratic weather, grow- ing populations in coastal regions and ongoing issues for women such as poverty, illiteracy and a lack of social safe- ty nets. As a result of their lower status in society, women are disproportionately affected by natural disasters, and are made even more vulnerable to disasters through their socially constructed roles. The International Labor F O C U S J U N E 2 0 0 6 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 43 While women are severely affected by natural and manmade disasters, they also gain unique opportunities to change their gendered status in society.