Mainstreaming 
Gender 
into 
Disaster 
Recovery 
and 
Reconstruction 


Anna Dimitríjevics 
The World Bank Institute 
adimitrijevics@worldbank.org, annadimitrijevics@gmail.com 


18 May 2007 
Draft paper – please do not quote without permission 



Contents 


Introduction………………………………………………………………..….….3 

Gender in disaster preparedness and risk mitigation…………………………….6 
Background………………………………………………………………6 
Gathering gender-sensitive data………………………………………….7 
Legal infrastructure………………………………………………………7 
Physical infrastructure……………………………………………………9 
Human development…………………………………………………….10 
Insurance………………………………………………………………...10 
Knowledge dissemination……………………………………………….10 
Early warning……………………………………………………………12 

Gender in disaster relief…………………………………………………………13 
Shelter…………………………………………………………………...13 
Aid distribution………………………………………………………….15 
Aid composition…………………………………………………………17 

Gender in disaster reconstruction and recovery…………………………………20 
Labour…………………………………………………………………...20 
Livelihoods………………………………………………………….…...23 
Social reconstruction…………………………………………………….26 

Institutionalising gender in disaster recovery……………………………………28 
Individual agents…………………………………………………………29 
Environment……………………………………………………………..30 
Timing……………………………………………………………………33 
Summary…………………………………………………………………33 

The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami ……...…………………………………………34 

The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami – India ………………………………………...35 
Gender and preparedness…………………………………………………39 
Gender and relief…………………………………………………………43 
Gender and reconstruction………………………………………………..47 

The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami – Thailand………………………………….......51 
Gender and preparedness…………………………………………………53 
Gender and relief…………………………………………………………58 
Gender and reconstruction………………………………………………..61 

References………………………………………………………………………...63 


Mainstreaming Gender into Disaster Recovery and Reconstruction 

1. Much has been written in the past decade about the way in which natural disasters 
affect men as a group and women as a group in different ways. In practice, however, 
disaster management still often pays lip service to gender concerns, while research on 
how gender could be institutionalised in disaster reconstruction has been scarce. The 
larger project that the present paper is part of explores this question with a view to 
providing actionable guidelines for policymakers, practitioners and the expert community 
towards the institutionalisation of gender sensitivity in disaster management. 
The first part of this paper provides a systematic overview of gender concerns 
throughout the disaster cycle. While our main focus is on disaster recovery and 
reconstruction, the different phases of disasters are sufficiently interlinked to merit 
comprehensive exploration. Having considered the main types of gender concern and the 
policy responses that they call for, the following section analyses the preconditions for 
achieving policy reform and the general process of institutionalising gender 
considerations. The second part of the paper relates our analysis to the experiences of 
India and Thailand after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. These case studies, based on 
secondary research, will act as the basis for further research in the field. 

Introduction 

2. Natural disasters amount to a serious disruption in the functioning of a community or 
a society by natural phenomena occurring in the biosphere, causing widespread human, 
economic or environmental losses. The scale of these losses is typically such that often 
the affected community cannot cope using its own resources.1 The frequency of natural 
disasters has been rising markedly, and at our current state of knowledge there is every 
reason to think that climate change will only exacerbate this trend (UNISDR 2007). 
Disasters pose a major challenge to development. Natural disasters take place 
throughout the world: three of the deadliest disasters in 2006 occurred in Europe, two of 
them striking wealthy Western countries: Belgium and the Netherlands (UNISDR 2007). 
The loss of lives is equally tragic in the developed and in the developing world, but the 
capacity of developing countries to recover from disaster and to mitigate its economic 
and social impacts is far more limited. The damage caused in Pakistan by the Kashmir 
earthquake of October 2005 roughly equalled the total official development assistance 
received nationally in the preceding three years, and was equivalent to total World Bank 
lending to the country over the preceding decade. Bank lending financed the construction 
of 487 schools in Mozambique over the span of 20 years – a single recent disaster, the 
2000 floods, damaged or destroyed around 500 primary schools and 7 secondary schools 
(Parker 2006). 

1 Definition adopted from the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (2004) 


Despite the very clear need to incorporate a disaster perspective into development 
efforts in disaster hotspots, most development assistance still does not account for this 
even where the likelihood that disasters will occur again is predictable. Nevertheless, the 
Independent Evaluation Group found that the World Bank demonstrated considerable 
flexibility in natural disaster assistance, and that natural disaster projects financed by the 
Bank have outperformed the Bank’s portfolio as a whole. The World Bank’s new 
operational policy on Rapid Response to Crises and Emergencies (OP 8.00, March 2007) 
is perhaps indicative of a larger shift in international awareness. 

3. Efforts to mitigate the impact of natural disasters are best thought of in terms of three 
distinct analytic categories: 
· preparedness and risk mitigation in the pre-disaster phase, 
· disaster relief immediately after the event, 
· and longer-term post-disaster reconstruction and recovery. 
Disasters recur periodically in many regions of the world. While the exact timing and 
extent of future disasters can rarely be predicted, the expectation of their occurrence in 
the form of future risk can and should be incorporated into development efforts in 
disaster-prone areas (Parker 2006). Reconstruction and recovery itself can therefore be 
construed as risk mitigation in preparation for the next expected disaster event. In 
addition, activities during any of these phases shape the circumstances and the available 
policy options during the next. For these reasons, the scope of this study will extend to 
cover risk mitigation and disaster relief alongside our main focus of recovery and 
reconstruction. 

4. Gender is a central organizing principle in many of the disaster-prone societies. While 
the experiences of individual women and of individual men in a disaster environment are 
heterogeneous, social, economic and political factors join biological differences (such as 
average physical strength) to shape the respective experiences and needs of women, and 
of men as a group. As men and women are generally interdependent, policies designed to 
impact on either of these groups are also likely to affect gender relations. Neglecting to 
take this likelihood into account can itself have adverse repercussions for the intended 
outcome of gender-targeted policies. 
The necessity of mainstreaming gender into disaster planning, relief and 
reconstruction for an optimal outcome is increasingly recognized. Relief organizations 
first moved towards a ‘women in development’ perspective, which has increasingly given 
space to a ‘gender and development’ approach (Bryne and Baden 1995). Within the UN 
system, the Beijing Platform for Action recognised in 1995 that the impact of natural 
disasters on women needed to be investigated further. Five years later, the 23rd special 
session of the General Assembly, entitled “Women 2000: gender equality, development 
and peace for the twenty-first century” reinforced the findings in the Beijing Platform 
review, and suggested that a gender perspective should be incorporated into disaster 
prevention, mitigation and recovery strategies. Its recommendations included that 
international and regional organisations assist governments in developing gender-
sensitive disaster management (UNDAW and ISDR 2001). The most recent landmark 
international agreement, the 2005 Hyogo Framework for Action, also states as a crosscutting 
principle that a gender perspective should be integrated into disaster management, 


including policies, plans and processes relating to risk assessment, early warning, 
information management and education and training (Molin Valdés 2006). 

5. The outline of the remainder of this paper is as follows. The first part of the paper 
surveys the main issues concerning gender specific needs and capacities in disasters. In 
addition to identifying the most important concerns, relevant policy options are identified 
and illustrated by lessons learnt and good practices from around the globe. The 
concluding section of this part of the paper takes this overview one step forward by 
considering the wider question of the institutionalisation of gender concerns in disaster 
recovery. The second part of the paper zooms in on two case studies, India and Thailand 
after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. It considers the gender-specific needs, 
vulnerabilities and capacities that were exposed in the disaster, and the actions taken by 
government authorities, the international community and by those directly affected by the 
disaster. 

Gender in disaster preparedness and risk mitigation 
6. Background. Disaster risk is created by the interaction of natural hazard – a 
potentially damaging natural phenomenon – and vulnerability: that is, the conditions and 
processes that define the susceptibility of a community to natural hazard. Natural risk 
mitigation can target either of these risk components. For instance, the likelihood of the 
occurrence of certain types of natural hazards, such as floods, can be influenced by 
human activity, such as the maintenance of natural drainage courses or the construction 
of levees. Reducing vulnerability to natural hazards, in turn, is in many cases easier to 
achieve than targeting hazards themselves, and in some cases it is the only available 
option for disaster risk mitigation. 
The gender dimensions of disaster risk impact are complex, and often highly 
pronounced. The overwhelmingly greater proportion of women victims alone 
demonstrates unequal risk exposure across genders in a large number of cases. While 
gender-disaggregated data is notoriously unavailable on a large scale, there is evidence 
that in many cases, disproportionately many of disaster victims were women. An Oxfam 
study of the 2004 tsunami’s impact on women found that in the eight villages surveyed in 
Indonesia’s Aceh Besar and North Aceh districts, male survivors outnumbered female 
survivors by a ratio of 3:1 to 4:1. Similar patterns were found in villages hit by the 
tsunami in India (Oxfam 2005a; Asian Development Bank, United Nations and World 
Bank 2005). In 1991, 90% of the victims of the Bangladesh cyclone were reported to be 
women and children (Schmuck 2002, cited in Smyth 2005). In the 1993 Maharashtra 
earthquake, women’s deaths also outnumbered men’s (CSSS, 1999). 

It should also be noted that this pattern was not observed everywhere. The majority of 
the victims of Hurricane Mitch in 1998 in Salvador and Guatemala were, in fact, men 
(Smyth 2005). The currently available data cannot support conclusive generalisations, but 
the information that we do have suggests that depending on local economic, social, 
political and environmental circumstances, there can be large differences between the 
gender groups in exposure and vulnerability to disaster risk. 

Some of the systematic factors that can recur as explanations for gender differences in 
disaster resilience in various types of disasters include women’s traditional 
responsibilities as caregivers to children, the infirm and the elderly. In quick onset 
disasters, women may be the physically closest to dependents and therefore more likely 
to attempt to rescue them, which may hinder their mobility. Cultural constraints, too, 
could mitigate against self-rescue, where women may not leave the home without male 
permission, or where women may be reluctant to seek shelter because the structures are 
not gender-segregated, or because their clothing may have been damaged. Women tend to 
be physically weaker as well, in part due to greater nutritional deficiencies, and they may 
lack skills such as swimming or tree climbing which could save lives in certain types of 
disaster. 

The poor also often have little choice but to build on unsafe grounds, and to erect 
structures which do not meet the currently binding building codes. This heightens the 
relative vulnerability of those who tend to spend more time indoors and around the house. 
Traditional patterns of gender division of labour, as well as the general 
overrepresentation of men among migrant labour, mean that it is women and children 


who are therefore most exposed to disaster in these conditions. Men, on the other hand, 
are often more vulnerable injuries from taking high levels of risk in rescue attempts. 

7. Gathering gender-sensitive data. The need to improve on the availability of gender-
sensitive data and its potential to contribute to disaster preparedness and to improve 
disaster response are well recognised. A basic step in this direction is the establishment of 
a comprehensive national system of identity documentation. Proof of identity is necessary 
for the registration of assets that may need to be recovered after a disaster, and for 
obtaining credit that may improve financial resilience to disasters. It can be required in 
post-disaster relief distribution, too, both where financial aid is transferred to bank 
accounts, and for receiving relief in kind. In the absence of national data, governments 
may also have to rely on other, sectoral or religious organisations for relief distribution, 
which can have large gaps and gender biases in their data. 
Proving identity can become particularly difficult for those without alternatives to a 
domestic national ID document, such as a driving license or a passport, and not covered 
by state health and social security systems with alternative ID systems. This tends to 
include the poor, and those disenfranchised within the household, both of which 
categories are female-dominated. Identity documents are often lost in rapid onset 
disasters, but a national registry system with centrally maintained databases would 
mitigate the impact of this happening. Government copies of identifying documents and 
other crucial information should be filed in a safe, disaster-proof system. 

While most countries do have a national ID system, a number are without. The latter 
include several developed common law countries such as Australia and Sweden, as well 
as middle or low income countries such as Mexico and Bangladesh. India is currently 
piloting a national identification card system. 

Collecting data on mortality and morbidity that is disaggregated by sex can also 
contribute to a more equitable and efficient disaster management system. It enables the 
identification of pre-and post-disaster trends, and allows for an appropriate response that 
corresponds to actual needs. Similarly, better data on the informal economy would allow 
to plan for and take into account disaster-related losses in the informal sector. By 
definition, of course, this is a difficult exercise. Nevertheless, improvements to the 
currently available data are possible, and given women’s overrepresentation in the 
informal sector, this would have positive gender implications. The World Bank attempted 
to do this in the 1999 Marmara Earthquake Assessment in Turkey, but gender 
disaggregated data was not provided in this case, either (Parker 2006). 

8. Legal infrastructure. Although this is not usually addressed at the national level as a 
disaster preparedness issue, the legal environment can greatly influence the resilience of 
women and men to disasters. The prior registration of house and land ownership can be 
indispensable in post-disaster reconstruction, not the least when relocation is required and 
compensation and new assets are allocated. In order to increase disaster resilience, 
ownership of houses and land should therefore be made legally possible for women as 
well as for every other group in a community. 
Good practice 


As part of projects financed by the World Bank in Maharashtra, widows received houses 
in their own names and ex gratia payments for lost relates were disbursed to them – a 
practice without precedence in the region. The 2001 El Salvador earthquake 
reconstruction project also stipulated that titles be put in the name of both men and 
women. A beneficiary survey subsequently concluded that in some communities, 50% of 
respondents came from households where a woman was one of the legal homeowners, 
with 37% of homes wholly owned by women. In Argentina, following a major flood, 
project financed by the World Bank reported positive social impacts from putting house 
and land titles in the wife’s name. 

Source: Parker (2006) 

Further to making ownership possible, joint ownership of assets by both husband and 
wife in the case of couples should be actively encouraged. In Vietnam, land titles used to 
be registered only in the man’s name. When the template of the official documents was 
modified with an extra line that provided space for women’s name to be added, this 
simple change had a far-reaching impact by allowing women to access credit and to start 
up new businesses. 

In some cases, the development community tried to remedy the tradition of 
registering houses in only the male’s name by registering new constructions solely in the 
name of the woman. This practice, however, may remedy one ill with another if it results 
in the exclusion of single adult men. Furthermore, the practice of putting assets in 
women’s name only may provoke a backlash by men that would ultimately harm women. 
Following Hurricane Mitch, a number of NGOs including the American Red Cross and 
Save the Children USA were registering their houses in Nicaragua in the name of the 
woman in order to put women on a footing of equal power within the family and to 
empower women. Many men spent some of the year in employment away from home, 
and most of the women had also worked on building the houses. However, after this 
practice was instituted, men started permanently disappearing, leaving women without 
support and without the income that men used to send home. Some women also showed 
signs of violence (cited in Fordham 2001). It appears therefore that the registration of 
houses and land jointly in the name of men and women, where applicable, is the most 
beneficial course of action. 

In a similar vein, the recognition of both genders’ right to inheritance in legislation 
would improve disaster resilience. In practice, women’s right to inheritance is not fully 
recognised in some disaster-prone areas. The enjoyment of this right would help 
surviving daughters as well as widows in recovering from losses incurred in disasters, 
and it may strengthen their autonomy and power within the household, contributing to 
their resilience to disasters a priori. 

For full effect, legal provisions must be matched with provisions to sensitise those 
employed in the application and enforcement of the law to the concerns that legislation is 
designed to address, and to gender-specific issues that might affect the application of the 
law. As well as serious attention to these concerns by judges, the police, the military and 
other agents of the state involved in providing security should ideally receive training to 


this effect. This should be complemented by a system of accountability that ensures the 
internalisation of such training. 

In some cases, those tasked with ensuring the security of disaster victims themselves 
became a source of threat to survivors. Following the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, for 
instance, an officer of the Special Task Force of Sri Lanka Police entered the shelter of a 
single woman in Ampara, and after touching her was scared off by her son. A woman 
suffering from mental health problems was beaten up by two officers from the same 
force. In other camps in Sri Lanka, there were allegations of police harassing women, 
watching them bathe, and in one case of raping a young tsunami-affected woman after 
seeking assistance from them (Fisher 2005). While these particular abuses may have been 
encouraged by the conflict situation in the affected territories, no explanation would 
constitute excuse, and these cases do draw attention to a wider need for instituting a 
gender-sensitive and gender-neutral culture in law enforcement. 

Recruiting women into the police force has brought positive results all over the world, 
including in traditionally patriarchal societies (Hill 2007). Welcoming women into the 
police and the security forces, as well as encouraging enrollment with disaster relief 
teams, could be an easy way to remedy many of the problems identified above. 

9. Physical infrastructure. A key element in disaster preparedness is the strengthening 
of physical infrastructure to better withstand disasters, especially so that even where 
infrastructure is damaged, it does not pose a threat to human life. Although precise data is 
hard to come by, experts agree that the additional cost of making buildings more disaster 
resilient is recovered multifold from the reduction in losses after a disaster strikes even if 
only material losses are taken into account. 
Disaster resilient housing protects those in particular who are the most likely to spend 
time indoors. In many regions, this usually means women and children: while men are 
more likely to find employment elsewhere, and sometimes spend long stretches of time 
away from home, women are more likely to find employment near the home or to be 
engaged in unpaid household work. It may also be the case that women traditionally sleep 
inside the houses, while men tend to sleep outside. Accordingly, it is thought that in the 
Maharashtra earthquake, women experienced a higher mortality rate than men precisely 
for this reason (Bryne and Baden 1995, Wiest et al 1992). Due to the sheer difference of 
the time spent at the dwelling, therefore, strengthening physical infrastructure can have 
particularly large benefits for the disaster resilience of women. 

Building and maintaining shelters is another central element of disaster preparedness 
in expectation of certain types of disaster. In the 1999 super cyclone in Orissa state, India, 
shelters designed and supported by the Red Cross were estimated to have saved around 
40 000 lives. The cyclone killed at least 10 000 who could not reach the shelters, but no-
one staying in a shelter died (Schmuck 2001). In addition to the maintenance of adequate 
shelters, attention to the cultural propriety of their design could also save lives. In some 
cultures, the likelihood that women would seek refuge in shelters in the absence of a male 
decisionmaker is greater if shelter facilities, including sleeping areas and toilets, are 
known to be segregated. Many women perished together with their children in the 1991 
Bangladesh cyclone and flood, waiting for their husbands to return home and lead them 
to safety. Those who did reach shelters found them insensitive to gender specific and 


cultural needs, lacking separate facilities and sanitary supplies for women (D’Cunha 
1997). 

10. Human development. Simple physical strength and fitness can also influence 
individuals’ resilience to disasters. Strength levels do not only depend on given biological 
factors such as gender, but also on the general physical condition, on nutrition and on 
health. In poor households that sometimes go through long periods of having insufficient 
nutritional resources, there are often hierarchies that determine household members’ 
access to food. 
It is a pattern particularly pronounced in South Asia that women often eat last in the 
family, making do with leftovers. A study conducted in Bangladesh found women 
receiving roughly the same amount of fish and animal product intake as preschooler boys. 
Men often also go without food to ensure sustenance for children where needed, with a 
preference accorded to boys over girls because boys’ labour contributions are often 
monetised whereas girls’ household chores are not, with the dowry system paying an 
additional role in the privileging of boys (IFPRI 2000, Salagrama 2006). 

11. Insurance. The microinsurance market for disaster risk is still in its infancy. The vast 
majority of disaster risk insurance policies are purchased in North America and in other 
high-income developed countries. Disaster risk insurance has the potential to provide 
crucial liquidity in the immediate aftermath of disasters, and it can ease access to credit 
during regular periods as it reduces the risk of the poor being forced to default on loans. 
The reach of disaster microinsurance has been severely limited by the double 
challenge of ensuring that policies are financially sustainable for insurance providers, and 
that they can be accessed at affordable premiums by poor and high-risk communities. 
While a degree of subsidy may often prove inevitable in maintaining a microinsurance 
market, the World Bank has been at the forefront of developing viable schemes in various 
locations, with innovative index-based crop insurance schemes leading these efforts. In 
Malawi, the World Bank collaborated with Opportunity International to catalyse the 
development of weather insurance products that could secure credit for groundnut 
farmers. The first policies were sold to 900 smallholders in November 2005, an important 
part of the successful start to the project being the training sessions held for the field, 
insurance and operation staff of the involved institutions. In India, the rural microfinance 
organisation BASIX set up a similar scheme with the collaboration of several other 
institutions, and with technical assistance from the World Bank (Mechler et al 2006, 
World Bank 2005). 

While disaster risk insurance continues to be out of the reach of most at-risk 
households, access should be ensured for all segments of the community where it is 
provided, including women. The further encouragement of registering disaster risk 
insurance as well as general life and property insurance in the name of both the man and 
the woman in the household, where applicable, would reap the same benefits as the 
provision of equal property and inheritance rights, as well as easing both genders’ access 
to credit. 

12. Knowledge dissemination. It is quite clear that the dissemination of knowledge with 
direct relevance for disaster awareness is one of the most important aspects of disaster 

preparedness. Knowing how to recognise the signs of an oncoming disaster, and how best 
to act, is a prerequisite of effective disaster response. This is well illustrated by the 
difference in casualty rates in Papua New Guinea between the 1998 and the 2000 
tsunamis. Although the country had experienced tsunamis before, in 1998 the people had 
almost no knowledge on tsunamis. Instead of seeking refuge immediately when feeling 
the earthquake and seeing the sea recede, many residents stood on the coast to watch the 
sea. When the tsunami struck, it claimed at least 2 200 lives. Following the disaster, the 
government collaborated with local academics and specialists from Japan and the US to 
raise tsunami awareness through distributing pamphlets, videos and through education at 
schools. When the 2000 tsunami reached Papua New Guinea’s shores, material 
destruction was considerable, but residents evacuated to higher ground immediately, and 
there were no casualties (ADRC 2000). 

It helpful to take gender into account when planning the content of disaster training, 
and to modify emphases according to the risk profiles of gender groups. The riskiness of 
some courses of action and relatively safer rescue methods may need to be emphasised 
particularly strongly in the case of men. Men were found to have been injured in greater 
numbers than women after Hurricane Mitch in Central America, where higher risk 
tolerance may have meant a higher vulnerability to sustaining injuries in search and 
rescue (Delaney and Shrader 2000). Similarly, men were found to have been at a higher 
risk of injury in the 2004 tsunami in India, again relating to high risks taken in rescue 
attempts (Guha-Sapir et al 2006). 

Equally, for the best effects gender ought also to be taken into account when choosing 
methods of disaster knowledge dissemination. There may be differences between the 
gender groups in literacy rates, mobility and access to public venues, labour schedules 
and general preferences for the means of participation. In South Africa, it was found that 
while men preferred climate information to be transmitted through the radio, women 
farmers preferred it to be made available through an extension officer or through the 
school. Women were less able to schedule a time to listen to the radio with having to 
balance multiple responsibilities from farming to domestic roles, and they also preferred 
an environment where questions could be handled immediately and a discussion could 
develop (Archer 2001). 

The establishment of local knowledge centres is one avenue through which disaster 
related knowledge could be disseminated. Such centres that have already been 
established, as in India, are linked to national disaster management programmes, to 
disaster research institutes, or to other programmes offering a wide range of training. 
They may teach local participants about early warning signs in nature and early warning 
provided through technology, about ways to respond, skills to respond, healthcare and 
first aid. Ideally, the process would be interactive so that local knowledge is exploited 
and there is community ownership of the project, including men and women. 

In addition to direct knowledge about natural disasters, training in further skills could 
also improve disaster resilience. Basic economic literacy, for instance, would enable 
women and men to operate bank accounts – crucial knowledge when post-disaster aid is 
disbursed through the banking system, as shown by past examples of relatives trying to 
hijack aid from women who did not have this knowledge (Tata Institute of Social 
Sciences 2005). Women and men ought also to be made aware of their legal rights and 
entitlements. 


13. Early warning. The institutionalisation of early warning systems that reach residents 
in adequate time is another major contributing factor to disaster resilience. In designing 
these systems, it is of paramount importance to ensure that vital information reaches all 
segments of the community. In the past, there have been examples of assuming that 
communicating the danger to one part of the community would ensure the passage of the 
information to all concerned, where this has had severe consequences. In Peru, it was 
discovered after a strong El Niño-Southern Oscillation event that the fishermen, all male, 
had been warned about the approaching event, but no provisions were made in 
preparation. The men did not pass on the warnings to the women in the village for sociocultural 
reasons, so that the women did not know about the upcoming conditions. Given 
that women manage household budgets, they would likely have budgeted differently to 
prepare for the event, had they had adequate information (Anderson 2001). In general, 
women have less access to information than men, and early warning systems should 
expressly address this concern. 
The post-tsunami years have seen an increase in the emphasis on building the 
technological capacity to detect and forecast disasters. While this has the potential to 
bring great benefits, this potential could only be fully realised if it is also ensured that the 
infrastructure is in place for warnings to reach poor communities. Again, designing 
appropriate infrastructure would involve planning for a means of reaching all in the 
community who are likely to be affected by a disaster. 


Gender in disaster relief 
14. The provision of disaster relief has been a highly visible item on the disaster 
management agenda since decades before investment in disaster preparedness started to 
gather momentum. The scale of post-disaster relief response is amplified by the often 
overwhelmingly urgent appearance of immediate needs, in slow-onset as well as in rapid 
onset disasters. At this stage, popular support is also temporarily focused by the media on 
the disaster hit areas. 
The need to act fast, however, can sometimes obscure the equally powerful but less 
visible need for relief to be administered with careful planning and with consideration of 
the local conditions. As has been observed by keen-sighted practitioners and academics 
from Amartya Sen to Fred Cuny, at its worst extreme disaster relief could cause damage 
that outweighs the benefits that are brought about. Gender considerations are among 
those key concerns that have proved to be vulnerable to the “tyranny of the urgent,” 
which calls for an express effort to mainstream them into relief operations. 

15. Shelter. The construction and maintenance of shelters and relief camps has numerous 
aspects that bear on the well-being of gender groups. Among these, safety is one of the 
most widely recognised and recurrent issues: following disasters, the threat of physical 
and sexual violence increases, especially against women, and this effect is magnified in 
relief camps. After the 2006 flood disaster in Bolivia, for instance, one of the key 
concerns identified in the San Julian emergency shelters was that only two of the camps 
had adequate lighting, while there were no direct security arrangements. This created a 
particularly insecure environment for women and children, especially at night (CARE 
2006). Indeed, there are cases where women relief workers from NGOs were told that 
they could not accompany the mission to the field because there was no guarantee of a 
secure place to stay (Akhter 1992). 
The location and set-up of shelters and of relief distribution points can affect the 
perceived and actual safety of those displaced by disaster. Locating shelters close to the 
original home, provided that the location is not particularly prone to new disasters 
provides extra safety through intimacy with the shelter’s physical surroundings, and 
through the usually reassuring perception of the familiar. Facilitating that communities 
stay together in shelter areas has similar advantages: although a previously strong social 
fabric can be among the casualties of natural disasters, the community is often a source of 
strength and support, and it often maintains an internal policing system that offers 
additional security – although this may also have oppressive features, especially as far as 
women are concerned. 

Safe access to bathing and sanitary areas in relief camps is often reported as a 
concern by women who fear harassment around these areas. Oxfam International 
received reports of sexual assaults taking place in poorly lit toilets (Oxfam 2005a). 
Women are also often in charge of collecting firewood and water, and are therefore 
particularly affected by the security of access routes to these resources. Safety of 
accommodation is equally important: Fisher (2005) recorded incidents in Sri Lanka 
tsunami camps that involved men triggering a power cut before entering an area where 


women slept to molest them. In India, women staying in tsunami relief camps had 
anxieties about young men loitering in the night with shelter arrangements in close 
proximity to each other, and without secure doors and lights in many areas (Pincha et al. 
2007, Reuters 2006). 

Inadequate privacy could also pose a threat to women’s security by increasing the 
threat of domestic violence. Tsunami survivors in Sri Lanka reported that husbands 
responded with violence towards their partners reluctant to have sex because of the 
presence of their children and the proximity of neighbours (Fisher 2005). The provision 
of privacy is clearly not a full answer to this phenomenon: forcing a partner to have sex is 
itself violence, whether there is adequate privacy or not, so that counselling, human rights 
education and the full prosecution of domestic and sexual violence are needed to tackle 
the problem. Nevertheless, satisfactory privacy arrangements may bring temporary relief 
to women, in addition to other benefits. 

Ensuring that female as well as male security staff and law enforcement officers are 
accessible to those sheltered in relief camps may increase the likelihood that victims of 
gender based violence come forward and report any assault that they suffered. Parallel to 
this, it is particularly important in regions where gender based and domestic violence is 
not socially recognised as a crime to sensitise security staff and police to these concerns. 
Ideally, the recognition of gender based violence should be institutionalised in the entire 
legislative and law enforcement system as a matter of course, with specific awareness 
raising for those officers dispatched to relief camps about the safety concerns of disaster 
survivors. In practice, the legal and security systems’ response to gender based violence 
is often lacking, with a tendency in some areas for police to advise victims against 
pursuing legal proceedings, or even turning away disaster victims wanting to report 
domestic violence (Fisher 2005, CATAW 2205). 

If incidents that are reported are recoded anonymously, this data can then be compiled 
and analysed so that any trends can be identified and addressed. It is also possible that 
some victims of domestic violence can not return to their household, or that they do not 
wish to return. These victims would need access to a safe area where they could escape 
the threat of further violence, which is often sustained. Ideally, safe shelters for domestic 
violence victims would be available under regular conditions, as well as for those living 
in temporary shelter. A final safety consideration is awareness that the danger of 
trafficking can increase dramatically both for girl and boy children in post-disaster 
situations. Vigilance on the part of parents, relatives and by shelter staff – especially in 
the case of orphans but also other children who are vulnerable to their own family, too – 
may mitigate this threat. 

As well as ensuring access to female and male security staff and law enforcement 
officers, the availability of female as well as male doctors and health workers in relief 
camps is particularly important. Pakistan offers an example of an encouraging scheme of 
delivering health services in a context where cultural norms may not allow women to be 
examined by male physicians, and where women’s mobility may be restricted. The Lady 
Health Worker national program is centrally funded and directed, but the female health 
workers are hired as contract agents, and are employed in the communities where they 
reside. They deliver treatment for minor ailments, and they provide immunisation and 
reproductive health services (World Bank 2005c). A 2001 review of the program by the 
UK’s DFID calculated that it has had larger impact on health outcomes per unit of cost 


than comparable alternative services (Oxford Policy Management 2002), and the program 
has also proved to be successful in disaster contexts. In the 2006 Pakistan earthquake, 
over 8000 community and lady health workers were mobilised, and it is thought to be in 
great part a result of this that mortality and morbidity rates in the days after the disaster 
were considerably lower than expected. Lady health workers in affected communities 
continued their work, and mobile teams were also dispatched to more distant areas 
(UNFPA 2006, Mahmood n.d.). 

Good practice 

A 2001 review of Pakistan’s Lady Health Worker Program found that it has had 
larger impact on health outcomes per unit of cost than comparable alternative services, 
and the program has also proved to be successful in disaster contexts. In the 2006 
Pakistan earthquake, over 8000 community and lady health workers were mobilised, and 
it is thought to be in great part a result of this that mortality and morbidity rates in the 
days after the disaster were considerably lower than expected. Lady health workers in 
affected communities continued their work, and mobile teams were also dispatched to 
more distant areas. 

Access to educational facilities for girls as well as for boys is equally important. This 
includes physical access to educational centres that can be reached safely, as well as the 
opportunity to attend. Some children who were at school before the disaster may no 
longer be able to attend because there is no school remaining in the vicinity, or because 
access routes are not safe, or because parents cannot afford to send them to school for 
lack of finances or for a need for extra labour in the household. Where parents need to 
choose who among several children will attend school, boys are usually given a 
preference over girls. After the 2006 Pakistan earthquake, school enrollment declined in 
many affected areas: child survivors have been forced to skip school in order to collect 
relief items with their families, or to look after younger siblings where the mother was 
dead or injured. Boys could earn some income clearing rubble, while girls had to wash 
clothes, collect water and do other household chores during the day (UN OCHA 2006). 

A final point to consider when planning the construction and administration of relief 
camps is that kitchens and hygienic areas need to be adequate and culturally appropriate. 
Bathing areas and toilets are best segregated by sex, which is indeed the usual practice; 
placing female and male bathing areas at some distance from each other and near well lit 
areas may also increase privacy. Where culturally necessary, women’s hygienic areas 
should also include a separate area to wash and dry menstruation cloths. Kitchens, where 
these are included in temporary shelters, also ought to be adapted to local food 
preparation customs in terms of ventillation, space and layout. Beneficiary participation 
in designing these facilities, where possible, would ensure the adequacy of these areas. 

16. Aid distribution. The logistics of relief aid distribution, especially in the case of food 
aid, raises a complex set of issues that range from reaching vulnerable groups to 
impacting on social status and intra-household power relations. It used to be the norm 

that food and other resources were distributed through men, and government relief 
operations in particular can still produce such a system when heads of household are 
targeted, who are usually assumed to be male. This system is now largely considered to 
be detrimental for a number of reasons. Female heads of household and their dependants 
could be overlooked by relief operations, in spite of generally being among the most 
vulnerable. The intended beneficiaries were also often not reached due to aid being 
siphoned off to be sold on the market, in exchange for alcohol, or to supply the armed 
forces, especially where the natural disaster took place against the background of general 
lawlessness or conflict (Marshall 1995). In addition to risking women’s access to food, 
distributing aid to men can also lead to women losing influence over a key area over 
which they previously held control, especially in areas such as Africa where women are 
responsible for production for household consumption (Bryne and Baden, 1995). 

Replacing an aid distribution system that targets men only with one that targets 
women, however, is not without its own problems. As female heads of household are at 
risk of being left out under the former system, so single men in particular are at risk of 
being excluded by schemes targeting women. In 1980, UNICEF switched to a ‘womenonly’ 
distribution system in some of the Khmer refugee camps on the border between 
Thailand and Cambodia. The intention behind bringing in the new policy was not one of 
attempting to improve women’s status: rather, it was intended to prevent siphoning off 
food aid for military use, to limit corruption by camp officials, and to save distribution 
time by halving the number of recipients. Compounded by other shortcomings in the 
system, this resulted in inequalities that left many households with less than was required 
to meet their minimum needs (Bryne and Baden, 1995). In polygamous societies, married 
women other than first wives may also find themselves marginalised in similar systems, 
although this was not found to be a problem in practice where surveys were conducted 
(Oxfam 1995). 

In addition, some men may find it difficult to accept the temporary transfer of power 
to women where women are the sole recipients of aid, while men are not in a position to 
secure food themselves. This also poses a difficulty in terms of men’s self-perceived 
ability to meet social expectations around the role of males as providers for the 
household, thus leading to psychological tension and a loss of self-esteem. By and large, 
however, men appear to accept such a redistribution of authority when it is linked to the 
receipt of food aid (Birch 1994). 

One possible approach to targeting food aid is the World Food Programme’s policy of 
delivering 80% of aid directly to women. WFP also aims to include women as well as 
men in food distribution committees, a target that was reached by 80% of country offices 
by 2001 (World Food Programme 2001). Similar policies may be more complex to 
administer than a simple men only or women only rule, but they have the potential to 
overcome the pitfalls inherent in single-sex recipient arrangements. 

Good practice 

In Iran, among other places in the Islamic world, relief teams operated by the Red 
Cross/Red Crescent Society now include women so female survivors can more freely 
discuss their needs. Woman-to-woman assistance also proved effective in Bangladesh, 


where strong social norms kept women out of distribution lines for emergency help: 
“This was especially true for building materials—perhaps because women had to look 
after their children and could not spend time at distribution centres. When strong purdah 
was prevalent women would not go to the centres or stand in line to receive relief.” 

Source: Enarson (n.d.) 

Vulnerabilities to exclusion in the receipt of relief aid are compounded in the case of 
the disabled and the elderly. In the case of those with functional limitations, physical 
access to distribution locations and/or help with the transportation of relief aid need to be 
arranged. The elderly may also face discrimination over the amounts of food aid 
received. In areas of India’s Tamil Nadu state it was found after the 2004 tsunami that 
where relief was mediated through communities’ traditional local authority organisations, 
elderly women and men were excluded on the assumption that they require little food for 
their survival (Pincha et al 2007). 

17. Aid composition. Gender specific needs ought to be taken into consideration when 
composing aid packages. Clothing delivered to survivors needs not only to be clean and 
in a good condition, but it also needs to be appropriate in the context of the local culture, 
and for all age groups. The culturally required clothing of adolescent girls, for instance, 
may be different from that of adult women, and may need to be provided separately. This 
is not always taken into account: in the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami many 
aid packages excluded chudhidar sets that are worn by girls (Murthy 2005). Where the 
affected communities belong to cultural or religious minorities, there may also be a 
shortage of appropriate clothing, especially for women whose dress codes are often more 
strictly regulated than those of men. Again in India, burkas were underprovided in areas 
with Muslim communities (Pincha et al 2007). In addition, undergarments for women are 
often missing from aid packages. 
Women also have particular sanitary necessities that need to be taken into account. 
Aid packages ought to contain supplies for menstrual blood absorption. In some areas, 
the most appropriate provisions would correspond to local indigenous methods of 
absorbing menstrual blood. It is also well noted, however, that aid agencies have in the 
past operated on the basis of false assumptions about local customs, and failed to provide 
sanitary pads where that in fact had been the standard method used by menstruating 
women. 

Pregnant and lactating women have needs that should ideally be addressed in relief 
operations. The availability of adequate milk, other crucial nutrients and of vitamin 
supplements has a strong impact on the health of mothers as well as their babies. Where 
medical supplies are limited and the case warrants so, pregnant and lactating women may 
need to have preferential access to medicine over men and other women, while in other 
respects the provision of medicine should be gender neutral. 

Displaced women and girls are also at a heightened risk of unwanted and high-risk 
pregnancies, high-risk deliveries and sexual violence. Men and boys as well as women 
and girls in post-disaster situations are at a higher exposure to contagious diseases 
including HIV/AIDS, and to urban sex work as a result of destitution or of human 
trafficking. Organisations such as the UNFPA have made great strides in promoting 
sexual and reproductive health in disaster-affected areas. Condoms, reproductive health 


kits and midwife kits have been distributed within a week of major disasters, and 
international, national and local organisations delivering relief have been involved in 
regular UNFPA-led reproductive health workshops (UNFPA 2005a, Krause n.d.). 

It is recommended that humanitarian actors and government staff, where applicable, 
receive training in reproductive and sexual health services, and have at their disposal the 
necessary resources to deliver these services in crisis situations. The Minimum Initial 
Services Package (MISP) was developed over a decade ago by a working group on UN 
agencies and other international organisations. MISP provides practical guidelines to 
prevent excess neonatal and maternal morbidity and mortality, to stem increases in 
sexually transmitted diseases and in unwanted pregnancies, to prevent and manage the 
consequences of sexual violence, and to plan for the provision of comprehensive 
reproductive health services once the situation is stabilised (Krause n.d.). 

Box X 

The Minimum Initial Services Package (MISP) for reproductive and sexual health 
was developed over a decade ago by a working group on UN agencies and other 
international organisations. Priority MISP activities are: 

o 
identification of lead agency and individuals to coordinate implementation of the 
MISP 
o 
prevention of sexual violence by ensuring refugee women and girls’ participation in 
emergency assistance provision and distribution, safe access to water, food, fuel and 
medical care and appropriate camp design 
o 
medical care for all survivors of sexual violence 
o 
prevention of HIV transmission by promoting knowledge about preventing the 
transmission of infections and ensuring a safe blood supply and condom availability 
o 
reducing neonatal and maternal morbidity and mortality rates by providing clean 
delivery kits for use by mothers or birth attendants, midwife delivery kits for health 
centres and establishing a referral system to manage obstetric emergencies 
o 
planning the provision of comprehensive RH services to be integrated into primary 
health care by collecting background RH data, ordering supplies, identifying service 
delivery sites and designing and implementing training programmes. 
Source: Krause (n.d.) 

As well as physical necessities, there is also a great need in post-disaster settings for 
psycho-social aid and programmes. Children are likely to need post-traumatic stress 
counselling. Adults’ own coping strategies may also be insufficient or destructive. Men 
have often been reported to turn to alcohol, and increases in rates of alcoholism and 
alcohol-related violence are not infrequent in disaster affected areas. Where possible, aid 
agencies could consider incorporating alcoholism prevention and counselling into the 
psycho-social services they provide, as also called for by residents in nearly every area 
surveyed by CARE, Oxfam and World Vision in tsunami affected areas (Rawal et al 
2005). Domestic violence counseling is also sorely needed in many cases. 


In addition, men have been observed to make less use of non-destructive coping 
mechanisms (Bryne and Baden 1995). Men may have a particular need for counselling to 
help cope with changes in gender roles that might have arisen in the wake of a disaster, 
and in their ability to fulfill these roles. Sports programmes for men as well as for women 
could be another promising means of relieving tension and of coping in the aftermath of a 
disaster. 

Finally, the issue of whether relief aid should include cash transfers is a complex one. 
Traditional wisdom is stacked against such a policy which is seen as ineffective and 
potentially destructive, and many institutions such as the World Bank officially rule out 
cash transfers. Nevertheless, some experts call for an increased use of cash assistance on 
the grounds that cash transfers in addition to livelihood creation can be especially 
effective for the poor, as shown by experiments in Turkey and in Chile (Parker 2006). As 
women number disproportionately among the poor, cash assistance to women and to 
single heads of households may prove to be an avenue worth exploring. 


Gender in disaster reconstruction and recovery 
18. Recovery and reconstruction activity is clearly demarcated by temporal indicators, 
taking place as it does in the wake of natural disasters, and by its focus on longer-term 
needs beyond the immediate survival necessities of disaster victims. At the same time, 
the boundaries between relief and recovery can become blurred if relief arrangements 
such as the erection of temporary shelters become a longer-term feature, effectively 
acting as recovery structures when resource scarcity or political failure hinders durable 
reconstruction. The links between reconstruction activity and preparedness are yet 
stronger. While reconstruction used to be viewed as a one-time response to a specific 
disaster, it is increasingly recognised that building back better, with a view to 
strengthening resilience against future disasters, has great advantages both economically 
and in terms of quality of life improvements. 
Building back better encompasses a number of dimensions with gender-specific 
implications, beyond the erection of strengthened physical infrastructure. It involves 
paying express attention to a range of issues from compensating women for the losses of 
their tools and assets that is often overlooked, through providing childcare for fathers and 
for mothers, to supporting the formation of men’s and women’s groups and strengthening 
human development. Mainstreaming gender into reconstruction provides for faster and 
deeper recovery, in addition to the benefits gained in promoting gender equality and 
addressing gender based vulnerabilities. 

19. Labour. Community participation in physical reconstruction is beneficial in many 
cases, particularly in the reconstruction of damaged dwellings. It is not unusual for 
authorities or for NGOs to contract external labour to carry out construction in disaster 
affected areas. This may have a number of undesirable effects: it might further 
demoralise those affected by disaster by failing to exploit a potential focus of productive 
activity and achievement for those who are likely to have lost livelihoods and may be 
feeling generally helpless in the aftermath of a disaster. It also eliminates a potential 
source of labour and income that could contribute to reviving the economy, at least in the 
shorter run. In some cases, local skills and products are sold at low prices to middlemen 
involved in the reconstruction, as with women in tsunami-affected Tamil Nadu who made 
thatch for housing (Murthy 2005). In yet other cases, such as in post-tsunami Indonesia, 
costs appear to have been inflated and quality compromised by using outside contractors, 
who had little interest in delivering quality products, and pushed up profit margins by 
using substandard materials in the construction (AC 2006). 
Good practice 

The International Federation of Red Cross represented the leading house builder in post-
tsunami Aceh. They based their policies on community based contracting as well as 
consultation. According to Australian Red Cross CEO Robert Tickner, this method is 
quicker, costs less and builds more local skills and capacities than when outside 
contractors are used. Perhaps most importantly, instead of waiting passively, people are 


helped to overcome the trauma of the tsunami as they literally take charge of rebuilding 
their own lives. 

Source: AC (2006) 

Even where local participation in physical reconstruction is encouraged, women are 
often excluded. There is no reason why this should be the case: women are perfectly 
capable, and often willing, to learn and practice masonry and a number of other skills 
involved in construction. While men may be initially reluctant to accept women’s 
participation in this area which is typically considered unusual for women, they have 
come to accept it even in conservative societies. After Hurricane Mitch, for instance, 
Nicaraguan women worked on rebuilding their houses, accepted – at the time – by the 
men in the communities as well (Fordham 2001). Not only were these efforts not pushed 
from the outside in general, but emergency workers were surprised at women’s 
participation in non-traditional tasks such as clearing roads and digging wells (Delaney 
and Shrader 2000). 

Good practice 

Swayam Shikshan Prayog (SSP), a network of women’s groups in India, trained women 
to work construction jobs and promoted disaster-resistant construction techniques 
following the Latur earthquake. Together with the Self-Employed Women’s Association, 
the SSP also promoted women’s training and employment in the Gujarat earthquake. 
“Theirs has been an inspiring saga of the strength and energy of women’s groups here. 
Wherever they have worked, the rate of completion of houses has been very successful. 
These women talk knowledgeably about beams, lintel, plinth, brackets, retrofitting and 
related technical terms. They can say whether a house has been constructed properly. 
They have designed their own houses with modifications.” (Pastizzi-Ferencic, 1998) 

Source: Enarson (n.d.) 

It is advisable that the affected women and men in a community also participate in 
deciding on the design of new housing, as well on the location and form of infrastructure 
such as water systems. External actors’ own preferences may not be acceptable to the 
beneficiaries for cultural or practical reasons. Involving only one group from the 
community, however, may also result in inadvertently overlooking the needs and 
preferences of other groups. In field research, women in India were found to emphasise 
more storage space, a place to work, stronger doors and grills, a water storage tank in the 
house, an accessible toilet and an attached cattle shed as priorities in building features. 
Men, by contrast, did not view these features as high priority (unpublished manuscript). 

While encouraging women’s participation in reconstruction, attention should also be 
paid to remunerating women’s labour in a fair manner. NGOs, especially from the West, 
can have a tendency to adopt a volunteer mindset that solicits and accepts the time and 
labour of contributors without material compensation. As women, in turn, have a 
tendency to come forward in greater numbers to perform communal tasks, this affects 


women disproportionately. Against a background of recent devastation and 
impoverishment, this oversight can in practice translate into an exploitative situation 
(UNDAW and ISDR 2001). 

An additional and equally important consideration is the workload carried by those 
affected by disaster, and their ability to perform the necessary tasks. One dimension of 
this issue affects women disproportionately, and another can affect men 
disproportionately. Women are usually expected to shoulder the burden of care for 
children, the infirm, the elderly and those with functional limitations, as well as attending 
to household chores and fetching water and firewood. Many of these tasks intensify in the 
aftermath of disasters, at the same time as traditional support networks can become 
damaged. If, in addition, women are also encouraged to participate in reconstruction and 
recovery, and to re-develop livelihoods, this means that women can be doing double or 
triple duty. The ideal solution would have to be one which does not compromise 
women’s ability to participate in labour outside the household. 

Men, on the other hand, may find themselves in the position of having to assume 
unfamiliar tasks if the women in the household have perished in the disaster, or became 
severely disabled. Childcare and household labour are both tasks which men may feel 
they lack the skills for, having performed little such labour in the past. Gender 
stereotypes also often designate domestic work as women’s task, so that men may 
experience psychological or social discomfort when they have to assume such work by 
necessity. In such situations, women relatives are sometimes asked to take on this role, 
which is likely to further increase already strenuous workloads, while reinforcing 
inequitable domestic labour arrangements according to traditional gender roles. 

One policy that would simultaneously alleviate the hefty workload of women and 
address men’s short term needs in help with childcare is setting up accessible and 
affordable childcare schemes. Communal childcare centres would free up time for parents 
while providing a safe environment for children, if appropriately designed. A great 
example is a project planned in 2003 in Zambia, where paid childcare was delivered by 
older women in the community. This scheme had the additional benefits of providing 
paid employment for these women, as well as recreating a form of support network 
(Parker 2006). NGOs and donors may wish to consider supporting childcare schemes that 
are provided without the stigma of welfare and extensive paperwork, particularly in the 
light of the fact that the participation of women from affected communities in relief and 
recovery efforts is often solicited without the offer of some form of personal 
compensation for their work (Enarson n.d.). In addition, tasks such as cooking, wood 
collection and water fetching could also be communally pooled (Bryne and Baden 1995). 

Good practice 

In a US flood, one manager in a state agency immediately brought in trailers and staff to 
provide on-site childcare for her predominantly female staff who were heavily impacted 
by the flood but also needed at work to assist others. While her on-the-spot decision 
helped, contingency planning to provide childcare to women in emergency relief roles 
would have helped yet more (Enarson n.d.). 


Another good example is a project planned in 2003 in Zambia, where paid childcare was 
delivered by older women in the community. This scheme had the additional benefits of 
providing paid employment for these women, as well as recreating a form of support 
network (Parker 2006). 

20. Livelihoods. Creating and recreating livelihoods is one of the most crucial 
components of recovery and reconstruction. Disaster affected areas can only be fully 
revitalised if earning opportunities are present on a large enough scale, beyond the 
activities of relief aid organisations. One aspect to restoring self-sufficiency and opening 
up earning possibilities is the recovery of pre-disaster economic opportunities. The other 
main aspect is the development of new livelihood opportunities, where possible. 
Often, reconstruction aid is focussed on revitalising the most visible industries in a 
region, as with the supply of boats and fishing equipment after the 2004 tsunami. 
However, a broader reconstruction reach that depending on the type of disaster covers the 
restoration of small agricultural plots, and compensates for the loss of tools and assets 
owned by those engaged outside the most visible industries, can be equally important for 
the economic recovery of disaster affected areas and of individual households. Flooding, 
draughts, hurricanes, tsunamis and other types of disaster can wreak havoc on agricultural 
land. Because it is often cultivated by women in the informal sector, and can therefore be 
more easily overlooked, the damage is not always incorporated into disaster assessments 
and recovery schemes in proportion to its significance for the affected households (Parker 
2006). 

Good practice 

Responding to extensive flooding in Chokwe district of Mozambique, the 
International Labour Organisation targeted women when it was evident that the heavily-
female sectors of agriculture and small trade had been extensively damaged. Women 
traders and farmers were given relief assistance, and were also directly engaged in the 
ILO’s labor-intensive programming. Of those directly benefiting from ILO initiatives 
(e.g., relocating markets, vocational training, restoring livestock), 87% were women. 

Source: ILO (2000) 

Reconstruction agendas may also exclude replacing the tools necessary for women’s 
economic activities that were typical before the disaster occurred. Sewing machines, and 
bicycles used for transporting goods to be marketed are two examples that could make a 
considerable difference to women’s ability to recover livelihoods in some areas, and that 
were not included in reconstruction assistance in recent disasters (Tata Institute of Social 
Sciences 2005). Investment practices with a gender bias can pose a further obstacle to 
recovery. Loans in the USA were found to be awarded disproportionately to male-owned 
businesses after disasters, although female-owned businesses also fail, as in the aftermath 
of the 1997 Red River floods (Enarson n.d.). 


Access to micro-credit under feasible terms can be equally important in recovering 
pre-disaster livelihoods and developing new ones. When floods in Bangladesh 
temporarily impaired women’s ability in the affected areas to continue trading in 
vegetables, sugar cane, clothes and other goods, micro-credit NGOs offering loans to low 
income women did not defer payments, which drove some to loan sharks, locking them in 
a cycle of increasing debt (Lovekamp 2003). 

Certainly, while making micro-credit schemes accessible and feasible, it is also 
necessary to ensure the operational and financial viability of micro-finance institutions 
and to maintain a cashflow during and after disasters. Nevertheless, there are policies that 
could ease the contradiction between these apparently contradictory needs. At the 
simplest, access to credit on affordable should be open to women as well as to men, and it 
should be available in traditionally women-dominated occupations as well. On a more 
complex level, it may be wise for micro-finance institutions to restrict reconstruction and 
rehabilitation assistance to existing clients, while opportunities may be offered to those 
newly seeking credit through disaster-specific aid schemes provided by government or by 
international organisations. It may also prove to be effective to implement a coherent 
disaster response at the sector level, instead of fragmented response by individual micro-
finance institutions. Economies of scale could be achieved through consolidating disaster 
risk identification and assessment, and effectiveness could be boosted by institutional 
specialization in providing a range of credit, savings and insurance services (Pantoja 
2002). In addition, a subsidized reinsurance policy could be considered that would be 
activated only in case of emergency, subject to reaching critical values of well-defined 
indicators (such as the scale of damage, or the obtaining of emergency financial packages 
from international institutions). 

Good practice 

The United Nations Development Programme, through ILO, provided US$ 50 000 for 
micro-credit financing in tsunami-hit Indonesia through the Meuraxa branch of the BQB 
bank in Banda Aceh. 90% of the population in the area died in the disaster, and most 
houses and infrastructure were totally destroyed. Since poor people kept their savings 
under their mattresses rather than in a bank, the survivors also lost their savings. Now the 
bank provides a way for them to keep their hard-earned cash safe, as well as specializes 
in micro-finance advice and credit. 
The bank is run by women. They manage the institution adhering to the Islamic principle 
of not charging interest, providing loans to the community to rebuild their houses and 
livelihoods, especially small businesses. 

Source: UNDP (2006b) 

Reconstruction need not be restricted to the recovery of pre-disaster livelihoods – 
indeed, in some cases it may even be a disadvantage to return to previous occupations. In 
some cases, natural disasters may bring about one-time changes in the geographical 
environment that make previous agricultural practices unfeasible. In other cases, disasters 
may herald fundamental longer term changes that require adaptation, as in regions of 


Africa that have been experiencing increasingly severe draughts and floods, likely to be 
linked to climate change. In yet other cases, disasters expose man-made vulnerabilities in 
local economies. The South Indian Federation of Fishermen Societies itself expressed 
misgivings over a government policy of automatically providing fishermen who suffered 
in the 2004 tsunami with new boats (SIFFS n.d.). As fisheries increasingly fell victim to 
the tragedy of commons, there was overcapacity in the sector already before the disaster, 
so that in the long term alternative livelihoods would have had to be sought in any case. 

Access to training in new skills, as well as broadening knowledge and capacity in 
existing operations is equally important for women and for men. However, women have 
in the past found it particularly difficult to access training and capacity building. Even 
among the 71 gender projects that were surveyed by the World Bank Independent 
Evaluation Group, only 18 planned training programmes. In the agriculture sector, 
cultural taboos have kept women from receiving advice on improved practices (Parker 
2006). Not only does this penalise women where much or all of agricultural labour is 
provided by female workers, but the practice can have broader implications for food 
security itself. 

Good practice 

To overcome the problem of insufficient advice for women on improved practices in 
agriculture and in other fields, recent projects trained female extension workers to reach 
women in rural areas. In projects in 1989 in Yemen, 1992 in Cameroon, 2000 in Mali, 
2001 in Tunisia and 2002 in China, female extension workers gave advice on animal 
husbandry and orchard management. They also developed creative materials and methods 
for accessing hard to reach audiences, such as drama and farmer competitions as well as 
using the mass media. In the 1992 Cameroon project, subsequent follow-up research 
indicated that around 40% of women improved their nutritional knowledge, and 20% 
improved their nutritional practices. 

Source: Parker (2006) 

Training and capacity building in new forms of livelihood should ideally be offered to 
men as well as to women. Past experience has also been largely positive in offering 
training and employment outside the occupations traditionally considered appropriate for 
a gender group. Cultural constraints on jobs deemed appropriate for given social groups 
have proved to be more durable in the case of religious-ethnic customs. In India, for 
example, where the caste system is still very strong in practice in many regions, higher 
caste members have refused to participate in courses in basket weaving and similar 
occupations that are associated with the lower castes. While it is advisable therefore to 
proceed with cultural sensitivity and awareness of local social rules when designing 
training programs, other examples have been very encouraging. Many cases have been 
recorded, including in India, where women successfully launched new careers in nontraditional 
areas such as electrical fitting, masonry and carpentry, against initial resistance 
from male relatives, but soon accepted by families and communities (Chopra 2005, 
Oxfam 2005b). 


Lessons learned 

A group of women in Mulukutú, Nicaragua organised themselves following 
Hurricane Joan in 1988 to recover from the disaster. The women were concerned with the 
loss of lives, houses and productive assets, but also with pre-disaster conditions including 
high rates of domestic violence, problems with STDs and unwanted pregnancies, and a 
lack of political power in the municipality. They started with a construction project for 
housing destroyed by the hurricane. Over the next ten years, and with the help of the men 
in the community, the women of Mulukutú successfully established a brick factory, 
carpentry workshops, and a women’s clinic. 

Source: Delaney and Shrader (2000), citing Puntos de Encuentro Special Bulletin on Gender and 
Hurricane Mitch 

21. Social reconstruction. Recovery and reconstruction also involves rebuilding the 
social fabric alongside the physical environment and the economy. Social reconstruction 
is less tangible than the other dimensions of post-disaster recovery, and as a consequence 
it may be overlooked, or consciously excluded from large donor and government 
operations for lack of hard performance indicators. The World Bank FHIS operation, for 
instance, took a decision during the Hurricane Mitch emergency to deemphasise direct 
social assistance to vulnerable populations, as well as taking the view that NGO and 
community participation could not be achieved during the disaster (Delaney and Shrader 
2000). Other international institutions such as the Inter-American Development Bank, 
and many national governments have also preferred in the past to concentrate recovery 
activity on photogenic infrastructure projects. 
Social reconstruction, however, is not only a desirable good in itself, but it boosts the 
implementation of physical and economic reconstruction projects, it is a foundation for 
longer-term development, and it contributes to disaster preparedness by building capacity 
and resilience. One aspect of this is the activity of communal groups, among which 
women’s self-help groups are notable. In India, for instance, authorities such as the Tamil 
Nadu state government have provided training and funding for organisations working 
with women’s self-help groups in order to boost social and economic empowerment and 
capacity building (Tamilnadu Corporation for Development of Women 2000). A study 
evaluating the impact of this programme in a Tamil Nadu region found that 72% of 
participating women provided assistance to their village from helping people to access 
and receive government benefits to resolving conflicts. 67% participated in the local 
government authorities (panchayats), with 70 out of 270 women contestants successful in 
the 2001 panchayat elections, and some elected as panchayat president. While men did in 
some cases present vigorous opposition to these developments, the capacity of self-help 
groups to bring about positive changes seems to have led to wide acceptance and support 
among men as well. It is estimated that by 2008, the self-help group programme will 
reach over 27 million women in India (Tesoriero 2006). 

In the context of post-disaster relief and recovery, self-help groups participated in 
search and rescue, community kitchens and grain bank administration, credit provision, 
village level decision making and livelihood development (Swayam Shikshan Prayog 


2006). Self help groups have also provided informal comfort and support to participating 
individuals, many of whom suffered trauma in the disaster and lost previously established 
social networks. Governments, development agencies and other organisations active in 
disaster reconstruction may therefore find it beneficial to facilitate the formation or reformation 
and the maintenance of self-help groups and their activities. Men’s groups as 
well as women’s groups would benefit from support that allows for grassroots level 
initiatives and decisions. 

Potential male opposition to providing resources for women’s groups and supporting 
women’s participation in decision-making could be mitigated not only through post fact 
demonstration of the benefits of such policies, but through other policies as well. 
Women’s representation and participation in communal decision-making fora may be 
more likely to be accepted and welcomed by men in traditionally patriarchal societies if 
promoted in a sensitive manner, initiated from inside the community and with 
background support from advocacy groups at the most, with the consultation of men and 
their inclusion in dialogues through the process, as well as through explaining mutual 
advantages and citing examples from elsewhere. Providing appropriate material resources 
to women’s groups rather than to individual women, and making it a rule that the 
resources be inherited by the next generation of women’s groups and may not be sold, 
could also reduce the risk of male backlash (Murthy 2005). 

General human development needs such as education, health and nutrition are a 
concern in many regions independently of the occurrence of natural disasters. As 
discussed earlier, the promotion of human development as a general policy at the same 
time enhances disaster preparedness by building resilience. The post-disaster 
reconstruction phase, nevertheless, may require intensified efforts in human development, 
as the disaster itself may have set back progress that had already been achieved. Again, it 
is important to pay specific attention to the needs of women and girl children, as their 
needs are often the first to be compromised at times of material difficulty. Special 
considerations in post-disaster recovery might include setting up a trust fund for the 
education of disaster affected children, at least half of which should be earmarked for 
girls (Murthy 2005), and providing arrangements that enable girl children to reach school 
safely. 

One final consideration is the effect of disasters on girls and women of marriageable 
ages and below. The planned marriages of many brides-to-be may be endangered by the 
losses suffered in the disaster, especially in regions where it is customary to provide 
substantial dowry. One solution may be to arrange mass marriages, where the cost would 
be substantially reduced (Murthy 2005). Another possibility is to provide for the dowry 
of the affected through state channels or through NGOs, with the proviso that the dowry 
be only accessible upon becoming of age (UNFPA, WSC and Oxfam 2005). Such a 
measure would simultaneously minimise the risk of underage marriages, which tends to 
increase after disasters when women number disproportionately among the dead. 


Institutionalising gender in disaster recovery 
22. Viewed from one angle, focusing on gender in disaster recovery is an analytical 
convenience. In practice, a thorough set of policies in the recovery and reconstruction 
phase will include disaster preparedness elements – mitigating the chances that recovery 
achievements will be eroded by the next major disaster to strike – and relief elements: the 
effectiveness of disaster response is enhanced by the plans and structures that arise from 
preparedness. 
At the same time, disaster recovery can offer a unique window of opportunity for 
institutionalizing gender concerns in disaster management that is quite unlike the usual 
opportunities and limitations of preparedness and relief. In the immediate aftermath of a 
major disaster that ravaged the local economy and shook society, it may be easier to 
initiate and embed deep reforms than against the institutional inertia and personal foot-
dragging that can characterise the regular state of affairs. This window of opportunity is 
unlikely to suffice by itself to achieve the institutionalization of gender in disaster 
management – a number of other factors, from a supportive environment to policy 
champions, greatly enhance the chances for mainstreaming gender in a lasting fashion. In 
other words, the systemic shock whose effects make the recovery period unique from the 
point of view of changing policy and practice may not be sufficient to achieve this goal – 
but it may, nevertheless, be necessary. 

Box X 

USAID (2005) proposes twenty-two lessons learned in the promotion of 
environmental policy reform in developing countries. While the content is different, the 
structure may be applicable to mainstreaming gender concerns, and to the promotion of 
other policy changes as well. The lessons are: 

1. Find a policy champion. 
2. Involve key stakeholders throughout the policy process. 
3. Coordinate with other donours. 
4. Adapt policy dialogue to specific political, cultural and economic contexts. 
5. Promote a flexible approach to policy dialogue. 
6. Approach policy change as a continuous process. 
7. Have a strategic time policy. 
8. Know the context in managing and communicating information. 
9. Communication legitimises the policy process and reinforces change. 
10. Be sure analyses are solid and credible. 
11. Help donour partners to design policy efforts. 
12. Account for a variety of factors when helping to design policy. 
13. Analyse the incentive structures of policy instruments. 
14. Anticipate barriers to policy implementation. 
15. Be alert to policy implementation realities. 

16. Develop an implementation strategy. 
17. Identify financing sources for short-and long-term implementation. 
18. Plan to help build the capacity of stakeholders. 
19. Delegate implementation responsibility to local authorities. 
20. Evaluate environmental policy performance. 
21. Tell a story – process and results. 
22. Learn to track what is important. 
23. Individual agents. Working with particular individuals or group of individuals can 
provide one avenue towards achieving the institutionalisation of gender concerns in 
disaster management. This can take the form of finding charismatic policy champions at 
the elite level, or persuading a large enough number of lower-level policymakers and 
community members to embrace the agenda. 
Elite individuals, whether from the official ranks of government or from other 
positions of power and opinion-shaping influence, can bring insight, charisma and skill to 
the pursuit of reforming policy and practice. Typically, there are many elite persons 
supporting agendas for significant policy change – what makes a particular difference is 
the inclusion in this group of high-level policymakers: that is, individuals with direct 
control over agendas and decisions at the central level. Such charismatic and powerful 
people could act as policy champions in mainstreaming gender concerns. A degree of 
wider receptivity provides additional support for policy reform, as even the most 
charismatic and skillful leaders are likely to founder in the face of strong opposition. 

Gender mainstreaming in disaster recovery could also be pursued through training 
and the persuasion of large numbers of professionals and local leaders. This may 
complement the role of policy champions by strengthening the execution of gender-
sensitive regulation, and by raising awareness and support at the community level. 

Central and local government can assume two roles in this process. At the most basic 
level, governments can legislate and issue regulations – depending on their competencies 

– that call for gender mainstreaming, and require corresponding training for officials 
involved in disaster management. In addition, governments could also support gender-
sensitive disaster training by providing initiative and resources, and publishing manuals, 
in cooperation with other organisations such as the UNISDR, the Provention initiative or 
the World Bank Group. The reason why broad government support under usual 
circumstances may not be the key component in the process leading to the 
institutionalisation of gender concerns in disaster management is the element of 
circularity in this expectation: government support spanning national and regional 
authorities is itself an indication that gender concerns have become mainstreamed. 
From the theoretical point of view, a focus on individual agents is based in the 
assumption that the key to changing policy and practice lies in changing the value which 
the relevant actors place on the contending possible states of world. There are two ways 
of changing whether actors evaluate gender mainstreaming as being in their interest: 
employing soft persuasion and using hard persuasion. 


Soft persuasion involves demonstrating, through an analysis of the situation and 
through illustrations by practices from elsewhere, that gender mainstreaming would be 
beneficial both in terms of the collective good, and in terms of the good of men as a 
group and of women as a group. The earlier sections of this paper demonstrated the 
manifold ways in which the failure to mainstream gender considerations into disaster 
management lead to damaging outcomes. Institutionalising gender concerns with 
sensitivity to local contexts, on the other hand, boosts the economy, reduces the disaster-
related psychological and domestic burden of men, and promotes the safety, prosperity 
and decision-making power of women. Specific examples of successfully achieving this 
are particularly powerful as a tool of soft persuasion. Our case study of India after the 
2004 tsunami, for instance, cites the example of Samudram, a grassroots women’s 
organization who won the support of the men in their communities for a variety of 
activities that empowered women, and that made them more resilient to disasters. 

Hard persuasion involves imposing an externally defined incentive structure which 
makes cooperation in gender mainstreaming pay off for the actors involved. As an 
example, the conditions of providing much-needed financial assistance could include the 
institutionalisation of gender concerns. Drawing up such conditions is faster and easier to 
achieve than attempting soft persuasion. Nevertheless, hard persuasion may be an inferior 
outcome in situations where soft persuasion is feasible. Firstly, the resulting 
improvements in gender mainstreaming may not be as deep as would be the case if the 
motivations for doing so were internalized, and policy changes may not prove to be 
lasting once the external imposition is removed. Secondly, opportunities for hard 
persuasion do not abound. Once again, the political world is becoming increasingly 
multipolar, so that pressure from traditional powers is easier to circumvent. The Bretton 
Woods institutions are facing the challenge of competition from private financial 
institutions whose lending comes without strings attached. The pressure of domestic 
opinion from voters and from the media, which itself can be susceptible to political 
influence, is not to be underestimated. However, it typically only has the potential to 
briefly transform into hard persuasion before elections, and only along a limited number 
of issues that do not typically feature disaster management – while the challenge of 
putting gender mainstreaming on the public agenda if not already there brings us back to 
square one. 

24. Environment. The existence of a supportive environment is usually a precondition 
for lasting, deep policy change. The process of creating such an environment may itself 
be a variable that drives the mainstreaming of gender concerns, to the extent that 
incremental, small changes move policy and practice closer to the institutionalisation of 
gender in disaster management. In general, however, a supportive environment is 
enabling of policy change, but it is not enough by itself to accomplish reforms that 
deviate too much from the status quo ante. 
One key element of a supportive environment is the acceptance of norms that are 
aligned with the desired policy change. Norms themselves can be influenced by policy, 
while policy can change in response to norms, but the potential circularity is neutralised 
if the source of norms and the site of policy change differ. Specifically, in the case of 
gender mainstreaming the desired site of policy change is typically the national, regional 
and local authorities, the legislation and regulation produced by these authorities, and 


practitioners and community members who institutionalise gender considerations in 
practice. The source of norms from which gender mainstreaming follows, however, may 
be international practice, regional practice, and advocacy work by local and overseas civil 
society. 

The likelihood that norms are internalised and acted upon is greater when they are not 
perceived to be imposed from the outside, or belonging to an alien culture. Regional 
expectations therefore are likely to carry more weight than international norms, so that 
the promotion of gender mainstreaming in and by countries that are seen to share similar 
characteristics as the target of policy change is more likely to take root. Similarly, 
domestic civil groups and international NGOs with domestic offices are more likely than 
overseas-based groups to be successful in spreading norms of gender equality and of 
attending to women’s and men’s different needs and vulnerabilities. 

The growing acceptance of norms that require the mainstreaming of gender in disaster 
management still does not, by itself, have the capacity to initiate policy change. The 
institutional structure around disaster management is another key component of the 
environment, and it is one that mediates the impact of norms, as well as the latitude of 
initiatives by individual actors. 

Where the institutional structure is weak and fragmented, there may be an opportunity 
to reform some areas towards higher gender sensitivity. Resistance to changing norms 
might be lower in smaller, ill-connected units than in large, slower-moving organisations. 
A fragmented disaster management structure also makes it less likely that disaster 
management is largely captured by interests that are hostile to the mainstreaming of 
gender concerns, although the predominance of gender-sensitive norms equally mitigates 
this possibility. The initial impact of individuals, especially of those other than high-
profile policy champions, may also be larger when targeting smaller structures. 

Box X 

A weak or fragmented institutional structure may offer more initial opportunities to 
promote gender mainstreaming in disaster management, as smaller units may present less 
resistance to change, and the overall structure presents a variety of control points with 
potentially diverse positions so that some units may be more receptive than others. The 
below model illustrates one such structure, representing the disaster management system 
of Hungary. 


A strong and coherent structure, by contrast, provides the capacity and coordination 
to adopt and implement significant and lasting reforms. The below model illustrates one 
such system, which can be found in Turkey and in Colombia. 
Source: Demeter (2007) 
Prime Minister Office 
National Disaster 
Management Unit 
(NDMU) 
Line Ministry Line Ministry Line Ministry 
Prime Minister’s 
Office 
Line Ministry 
National Disaster 
Management Unit 
Line Ministry 
Disaster Management 
Unit 
Line Ministry 
Disaster Management 
Unit 
A strong and coherent structure, by contrast, provides the capacity and coordination 
to adopt and implement significant and lasting reforms. The below model illustrates one 
such system, which can be found in Turkey and in Colombia. 
Source: Demeter (2007) 
Prime Minister Office 
National Disaster 
Management Unit 
(NDMU) 
Line Ministry Line Ministry Line Ministry 
Prime Minister’s 
Office 
Line Ministry 
National Disaster 
Management Unit 
Line Ministry 
Disaster Management 
Unit 
Line Ministry 
Disaster Management 
Unit 
However, the chances of comprehensive reform, and of the lasting institutionalisation 
of gender concerns, are likely to be far greater where the disaster management 
institutional structure and the wider institutional framework are strong and coherent. A 
solid organisational capacity, from available skill sets and human resources through 
finances and strategic planning to synergetic external connectivities would boost the 
efficacy of disaster management in general, and the institutionalisation of gender 
concerns in particular. Institutional capacity is expected to reduce restructuring and staff 
turnover, boost institutional memory and the longevity of reforms, mobilise resources 
necessary for the implementation of policies, cut inefficiencies by improving donor 
coordination, develop credible partnerships and campaigns, and establish clear 
compliance mechanisms. 


25. Timing. In many ways, timing is crucial to determining the success of mainstreaming 
gender in disaster management. The ability to take advantage of opportunities that 
present an unusual degree of openness to changes in policy and in practice, of course, 
depends on a host of preconditions: capable actors, supporting norms and adequate 
institutions. Good timing is certainly not sufficient for successful reforms, but it is, 
nevertheless, indispensable. 
Timing is generally favourable for policy change when the possibilities of existing 
arrangements are exhausted, when these arrangements consume too many resources, or 
when the system suffers large external shocks. Path dependence theory (Pierson 2000) 
suggests that institutions are sticky: institutional change, including changes in rules and 
policy frameworks, is generally bound by previous outcomes and the historical path of 
development that any given institution has followed. Accordingly, large and lasting 
changes in policy and institutional practice, signalling a significant break with previous 
frameworks and practices, is likely only to take place as a reaction to a considerable 
external stimulus. 

The shock of a major disaster may provide exactly the kind of stimulus that opens up 
the possibility of changing policy and practice towards gender sensitive disaster 
management. The impact of a disaster shock on natural hazard management is not 
necessarily causal: disasters have been occurring for millennia without any change in 
attitudes towards affected women and affected men. On this scale, disaster management 
itself, as well as concepts such as human rights, are very recent developments. However, 
what this proves is not that disaster shocks are irrelevant, but that the existing 
preconditions limit the scope of achievable policy change at any one time. Where norms 
of gender equity or psychological welfare are less well developed, the range of 
achievable change is likely to centre on making progress on a few of the issues and on the 
strengthening of gender-sensitive norms that could later support further change, rather 
than an immediate move to incorporating the full range of gender-specific concerns into 
disaster management. 

26. Summary. The institutionalisation of gender in disaster recovery, therefore, can be 
reached through the interaction of several components. An overview of the main gender 
issues in disaster management, as listed in this paper, promotes awareness of best practice 
and provides guidance on the changes in policy and practice that are necessary for 
mainstreaming gender. Policy champions may be won over and the cooperation of other 
professionals and leaders may be secured through soft persuasion, demonstrating the 
benefits from gender mainstreaming, or through hard persuasion, by making such policy 
change a condition of providing economic or political support. The promotion of gender-
sensitive norms creates an environment that is fertile for gender-sensitive changes in 
practice and in policy, while a strong and coherent institutional structure is similarly 
indispensable to the implementation of gender mainstreaming. Truly far-reaching reforms 
have the best chance of implementation in the wake of an external shock to the system, 
such as a major disaster, with the depth of the resulting change being in proportion with 
the strength of these preconditions. 

The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami 
Tsunamis result from submarine earthquakes that lift the entire water column above 
the source of the quake. This energy is then transferred to waves that travel both out to 
the deep ocean (distant tsunami) and another tsunami that travels towards the coast (local 
tsunami). As the local tsunami approaches the shore, its amplitude increases at the same 
time as the wavelength decreases, resulting in a steepening of the leading wave. Most 
tsunamis crash into the shore not as giant breaking waves, but as very strong and rapid 
tides, with most of the damage caused by strong currents and floating debris. Edge waves 
are often generated that travel back and forth, so that the first runup of a tsunami may in 
fact not be the strongest (USGS 2005). 

The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, also referred to as the Sumatra-Andaman earthquake 
within the scientific community, was one of the most devastating disasters in modern 
history. The earthquake which trigerred the waves was the second largest earthquake ever 
recorded on a seismograph. Lasting between 8.3 and 10 minutes, the faulting was 
reported to be of the longest duration ever observed, and it was large enough to cause the 
entire planet to vibrate by over a centimetre (Walton 2005). The total energy of the 
tsunami waves was estimated by the Tsunami Society to have been in the order of 20 
petajoules, which is more than twice the explosive energy used in the Second World War 
(including the two atomic bombs). 

The hardest hit countries were Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and the 
Maldives. The UN Office of the Envoy for Tsunami Recovery put the human toll at 
nearly 230 000, including 42 883 missing persons. The environment and the affected 
countries’ economies also suffered enormous damage, and there was fear that the death 
toll could rise yet further with the spread of disease, epidemics and hunger. Among the 
few positive outcomes of the disaster, a ceasefire was declared in Aceh province with the 
tsunami as explicit justification (Memorandum of Understanding 2005). The waves also 
washed away the sand from the ruins of a 1200 year old lost city, Mahabalipuram, in 
Southern India. 

The national and international response was swift and was party the reason why a 
second, humanitarian disaster was averted. Governments from all over the world 
provided over US$ 7 billion in aid, in addition to which in many countries, as in the UK, 
public donations outweighed official contributions. To this day, there are displaced 
persons in the affected areas who have not yet moved into new housing; the recovery and 
reconstruction process continues. 


The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami -India 
27. The tsunami. On December 26, 2004, a series of earthquakes occurred off the west 
coast of Northern Sumatra, Indonesia, and west of Pulo Kunji Great Nicobar, India. The 
magnitude and the intensity of the earthquakes and their aftershocks measured 6.0 to 9.0 
USGS. The earthquakes triggered giant tsunami tidal waves in the Indian Ocean, 
travelling westwards as far as Africa. The waves that hit the southern and eastern shores 
of India were 3 to 10 metres high, penetrating inland up to 3 kilometres (Asian 
Development Bank, United Nations and World Bank 2005). Most of the devastation was 
wrought on Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andra Pradesh and Pondicherry, and on the Andaman 
and Nicobar islands. 
Although India has experienced tsunamis before, the last time a major tsunami hit 
India was in 1945. Most of the affected population had been unaware of the approaching 
danger, which is very likely to have aggravated the losses. An estimated 2.7 million were 
affected by the disaster. At least 10 881 lost their lives, with 5 792 reported missing and 6 
913 injured. The overall economic damage and losses, excluding Andaman and Nicobar, 
were estimated at US$1 billion (World Bank 2005b). Economic activity on the coastline 
had taken place in largely in the informal and unorganised sections, with relatively small 
contributions to the states’ economies. As a result, the economic losses did not directly 
impact on the national GDP, and public finances in the affected states suffered on the 
expenditure side only. In Pondicherry state, total tsunami-related expenditures over the 
course of the following three years were estimated to be around 9% of GDP (Asian 
Development Bank, United Nations and World Bank 2005, World Bank 2005a). 

[insert Table 2 on reconstruction needs from Asian Development Bank, United 
Nations and World Bank (2005), p.9., when permission and suitable format received] 

India was not in a position to activate an effective early warning system as the 
tsunami approached. The Government of India, in cooperation with the United Nations 
Development Programme, did embark on the establishment of a nationwide system of 
Community Based Disaster Preparedness (CBDP). The components of this system 
encompass the establishment of village disaster management committees, whose target 
membership includes women’s organizations; review and analysis of past disasters that 
draws on the experience of elderly village members; village-specific mapping of risk, 
vulnerabilities and capacities; the formation of village disaster management teams to 
organise crisis response; and the establishment of community contingency funds (Pervaiz 
et al. n.d., National Institute of Disaster Management 2005). 

However, this system did not mitigate the impact of the tsunami for two 
straightforward reasons. Firstly, in December 2004 it was still in the process of being 
adopted. As of September 2004, only one state had approved the state disaster 
management policy, while 7333 district-level district management committee members 
had been trained, and 3061 village-level disaster management committees had been 
formed. (Pervaiz et al. n.d.) Secondly, tsunami preparedness specifically had received 
relatively little attention among other types of natural hazards to which India is exposed: 
nearly 54% of the landmass is prone to earthquake, 68% to droughts, 40 million hectares 


to floods and 8000 km of coastline to cyclones. A minor tsunami did in fact hit Gujarat’s 
Dhandhuka district and devastated seven villages in 1993. No lives were lost at that time, 
however, and the disaster had little impact on raising tsunami awareness. In the opinion 
of Mihir Bhatt, the director of the Disaster Mitigation Institute at the time, “in India, 
tsunamis are not a well-studied subject. It’s such a rare phenomenon that at a national 
level no assessment has been done so far to mark the coastal villages and ports that are 
vulnerable to this phenomenon” (Bhatt 2004). 

28. Impact differences by gender. Despite the unavailability of systematic data, it is 
widely recognised that more women died in the 2004 tsunami than men. In areas where 
data does exist, it was found that up to three times as many of the victims were women 
(Asian Development Bank, United Nations and World Bank 2005, Oxfam 2005).2 The 
reasons for this disparity vary from lack of relevant knowledge and skills through cultural 
constraints to accident. 
Neither women nor men had the knowledge in general to recognise the signs of the 
approaching tsunami and to respond appropriately. The general gender division of labour 
in coastal fishing, however, put women at an added disadvantage. When the tsunami hit, 
many men were out at sea, while women were waiting at the shore for the men to return 
with the day’s catch. The tsunami, travelling relatively calmly at sea, passed under the 
boats of the fishermen, but the waves of destruction swelled up several metres high by the 
time it reached the shore. 

The ability to swim and to climb trees could have saved the lives of many women 
when the waves struck. Guha-Sapir et al (2006) found that swimming ability reduced the 
overall mortality rate by more than 60%. Among women who could swim, the death rate 
was significantly lower as compared to the majority who could not (see figure X). 
Women were also constrained in their mobility by their traditional dress, and were 
reportedly kept from running to safety by a sense of shame when waves ripped apart their 
clothes (Murthy 2005). 

2 In Indonesia, the numbers reported were even higher, with up to four times as many women victims as 
men. 


Female unable to swim 
Female able to swim 
0% 
2% 
4% 
6% 
8% 
10% 
12% 
14% 
10-19 20-29 30-39 40-49 50+ 
Age 
Female unable to swim 
Female able to swim 
0% 
2% 
4% 
6% 
8% 
10% 
12% 
14% 
10-19 20-29 30-39 40-49 50+ 
Age 
Figure X. The proportion of deaths amongst women as a function of age and ability to swim. Source: Guha-
Sapir et al (2006), p. 40. 

In addition, women traditionally assume the tasks of caring for dependents. Many lost 
their lives attempting to save the children, the infirm and the elderly in their care. Men, 
by contrast, were at a higher risk of injuries that they probably suffered during rescue 
attempts, which they were more likely to undertake and to survive due to greater physical 
strength and the ability to swim. As Guha-Sapir et al (2006) point out, strengthening 
individuals’ capacity to save themselves may also work to reduce the need for risky 
rescue attempts. 

29. Response. The Government of India responded to the disaster with an impressive 
relief operation even before the full extent of damages could be assessed. Local 
governments and their health units were the first to become active, followed promptly by 
the state governments concerned. India also provided timely and efficient assistance to 
neighbouring countries: she was the first country to respond by dispatching naval ships 
and personnel upon request to areas of Indonesia and Sri Lanka that were otherwise 
difficult to access, and India also sent medicine, food grains, blankets and other materials 
to Thailand and to the Maldives (Sinha 2005). 
At the national level, the Ministry of Home Affairs was designated as the nodal point 
for coordinating relief in the affected. Alongside other funds, $627.81 million was 
allocated from the National Calamity Contingency Fund to the affected states and union 


territories. The national government, state governments and UT administration were 
supported by the police, fire and rescue and medical services in identifying bodies, 
rescuing over 700 000 people, setting up nearly 800 relief camps, working to prevent 
epidemic outbreaks, restoring basic services and infrastructure, and disbursing financial 
assistance and relief (Asian Development Bank, United Nations and World Bank 2005). 

The Government of Tamil Nadu set up village-level ‘tsunami relief committees’ in 
every village within a few weeks, to help coordinate relief and to provide feedback to the 
administration and to its NGO partners. These committees, headed by the president of the 
local panchayat, included three office bearers of the local fishermen’s organisation, and 
one representative each of women, scheduled castes and other marginal communities, 
two NGO representatives and other village officials (World Bank 2005b). The express 
attention to including marginalised groups was praiseworthy. However, as women were 
likely to be in a minority and considered of a lower rank than the more powerful 
members of the committees, it is also likely that in many cases women had little 
opportunity to meaningfully influence the process. 

NGOs and civil society, as well as the private sector, were galvanised into action 
locally and internationally. The Government of India did decide to restrict the operations 
of non-Indian organisations, which provoked heated debate at the time. One of the 
explanations provided for this decision was that local individuals and organisations were 
more likely to have adequate case-specific knowledge, and were therefore in a better 
position to serve the affected regions (Sinha 2005). 

From the international community, the United Nations Disaster Management Team 
designated UNICEF as the focal point for UN relief activities. The agency deployed rapid 
action teams, and sent reports within three days of the disaster. UN system efforts for 
rehabilitation and recovery were coordinated UNDP. The World Bank, for its part, 
provided support in the framework of an emergency tsunami reconstruction project 
focussed on Tamil Nadu and on Pondicherry. The project’s components included funding 
for housing reconstruction, the restoration of livelihoods – including the restoration of 
damaged agricultural lands in addition to assistance to fisheries –, financing for public 
buildings and public works, technical assistance and training, and implementation 
support. The technical assistance and training component incorporated an express 
emphasis on “efforts to ensure involvement of the affected communities, especially the 
most vulnerable groups, in planning, deciding, implementing and monitoring the housing 
reconstruction and livelihoods programs” (World Bank 2005b, Government of Tamil 
Nadu, Government of Pondicherry 2005). 

The World Bank project was financed in part by reallocations from existing credit 
schemes. It is of some concern that one of the affected schemes was the Woman and 
Child Development project (N-0420), from which $25 million, or 8.3% of the original 
principal, was scheduled to be reallocated to tsunami response (World Bank 2005b). This 
project was evaluated as underperforming in its own right, and the reallocation did not 
appear to have affected its performance (World Bank 2006). Nevertheless, it is to be 
hoped that this does not contain adverse implications for efforts to promote women’s 
health and gender equality in the mid term. 


Gender and preparedness 

30. Data. As has been argued by many in the literature and in the field, and in this paper 
as well, the availability of gender-segregated data is all-important in facilitating gender 
sensitive disaster management. On the national level, gender-segregated data is available 
even in sensitive areas such as child labour (see Figure X). At the local level, however, 
there can be serious gaps in the availability of even basic, gender-aggregated data. 
Female Male 
Adult mortality rate (per 1000, probability of dying between 15-60 yrs) a 161 241 
Adult participation in labour force (%)a 36.1 84.4 
Adult literacy rate (%)a 48 73 
Economically active children (% of ages 7-14) a 5.1 5.3 
% in agriculture 76.6 70.5 
% in manufacturing 15.4 10 
% in services 6.5 15.9 
Female-headed households (%)a 10 
Maternal mortality ratio (per 100 000 live births) a 540 
Percent of births at high risk b 50.7 
Percent of women married before the legal age (18) b 61 
Percent of women involved in decisions about own health care b 52 

a Source: World Development Indicators, 2006 
b Source: National Family Health Survey, India (NFHS-2), 1998-9 
Figure X 

The lack of appropriate local-level data means that it is hard to fully assess the impact 
of the disaster on women as a group, and on men as a group. This, in turn, makes it 
harder to mount an appropriate relief response, to mitigate disaster in the short and long 
run, and to identify and address exclusionary practices. 

Patchy data availability was in some instances reported to have directly caused 
exclusion. As authorities in some cases had to rely on other organisations for information, 
relief coverage was not always complete (see Box X). Inadequate data availability 
therefore contributed to the cumulative disadvantage of those who were marginalised on 
several accounts, such as women from scheduled castes or from minority ethnic or 
religious groups, or those with disabilities (Asian Development Bank, United Nations and 
World Bank 2005). Improving on the collection of thorough and gender-segregated data 
in the future, under the authority of district or higher level government or of an 
independent institution such as the National Institute of Disaster Management, would 
facilitate improved disaster preparedness, and a better disaster response. 

Illustration 

“Veerabagupathy in Kanyakumari district is a village comprising almost entirely of 
Hindu non-fish worker families in an area full of Christian fish worker villages. In the 
initial days following the tsunami, relief bypassed the village. When this was brought to 

39 


the attention of the administration, their initial response was to deny that such a village 
existed. Subsequently, though, they backtracked, and assistance to the village was 
provided. One could read many meanings into an exclusion of this sort. But, the issue 
appears to be a failure of the system as a whole. In Kanyakumari district, the 
administration and the Catholic Church have worked together very closely, with the 
administration relying on the Church for information – the Church being a very well-
established force in the area, maintains extensive records of births, deaths and other 
minutiae that provide detailed information on the families living in the area… 
Veerabagupathy did not figure in the Church records for obvious reasons.” 

Source: Tata Institute of Social Sciences (2005), p. 27 
Box X 

On a more fundamental level, the use of ration cards as the primary means of 
establishing identity and residence in India has some unfortunate aspects from the point 
of view of disaster resilience both in the details of its use and as a general concept. Ration 
cards are issued on a household and per kitchen basis, and entitle the recipients to 
purchase subsidised grain. In the absence of a standardised national identity document or 
social identity number, ration cards became the most widely used proof of identity in the 
country. 

Those who do not easily fit into a household category, including divorced women 
returning to their birth families and openly transgendered individuals, may face 
difficulties establishing their identity, particularly in a post-disaster setting. In addition, 
some reports have found in tsunami-affected areas that many private aid organisations 
made the disbursement of relief conditional on the show of a ration card, and that this 
tended to be registered in the name of the male household head only. This created a 
problem particularly where men spent aid on alcohol, where individuals were not 
registered on any household ration cards in the first place, and where the ration cards that 
had disappeared in the disaster were not replaced for months (Human Rights Watch 2005, 
Sethi and Vizhi 2005). 

Given the constraints of the situation, state governments in general mounted an 
efficient response, and moved swiftly to provide replacement ration cards to those who 
had lost theirs in the disaster. Two days after the tsunami, the Kerala state cabinet moved 
to simplify procedures for issuing duplicates, and announced a month’s free ration to the 
displaced. Tamil Nadu officials, too, began to issue replacement cards within a matter of 
days (The Hindu 2004a, The Hindu 2004b). Nevertheless, some tsunami survivors 
remained without replacement cards for months. This placed a great burden even on 
regular households, who were forced to spend up to double and above their regular 
budget on household staples as a result of having to shop in the open market. Applicants 
also reported that the attitude of local clerks could be a source of obstruction, some of 
whom were found to come across as unhelpful and intimidating (Sethi and Vizhi 2005). 

Good practice 


Ration cards are the primary means of establishing identity in India, and they provide 
crucial access to affordable grains for many poor households. Inevitably, many tsunami 
survivors lost their ration cards to the waves. State governments in general moved swiftly 
to provide replacement documents to those who had lost theirs in the disaster. Two days 
after the tsunami, the Kerala state cabinet moved to simplify procedures for issuing 
duplicates, and announced a month’s free ration to the displaced. Tamil Nadu officials, 
too, began to issue replacement cards within a matter of days 

31. Legal infrastructure. There are two aspects of making legal infrastructures gender 
neutral that are relevant to improving disaster preparedness. One aspect is the letter of the 
law, or the legal provisions that have been enacted. The other aspect is law enforcement, 
which could also have negative implications if gender blind or gender biased. 
Women’s right to property ownership can act to reduce their vulnerability to 
disasters, especially where ownership is well documented and where this documentation 
forms a basis for post-disaster compensation. Land or house ownership has economic 
benefits from the straightforward wealth effect to improving access to credit markets. It 
also tends to have an empowering impact on women that may increase their 
independence, their mobility, their access to information and their participation in 
household decision making. 

India has made great strides in improving land ownership laws as they apply to 
women. A recent important piece of national legislation, the Hindu Succession 
(Amendment) Act of 2005 struck a gender discriminatory clause that had been in effect 
on agricultural land. However, there is still some way to go in making legislation gender 
neutral, especially in the case of Muslim women to whom much legislation, including the 
2005 Act, does not apply. The Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act of 1937, 
still in effect, recognises daughters’ and widows’ property rights, but there rights are not 
applied to agricultural land. 

The continuing necessity of improving the legal infrastructure for promoting gender 
equality is illustrated well by a glance at the figures on land ownership in practice. In 
Uttar Pradesh, for example, the 50% of the population that women represent owns a mere 
0.01% of the state’s natural resources for livelihood purposes. Of the high, middle and 
lower castes, only five, two and fifteen percent of women respectively own land, with an 
estimated 60% of the high caste landowners only receiving a share of land in order to 
circumvent the legal land ceiling (Awasthi 2006). 

Where legal provisions are indeed favourable, these are not always respected in 
practice. The Ministry of Rural Development has instructed that 40% of agricultural land 
settled under land reform programmes should be registered exclusively in the name of 
women, and that the remaining land may be jointly in the name of husband and wife. 
However, compliance with this instruction is reportedly weak. Women also often 
relinquish property to brothers, in order to comply with cultural expectations and to avoid 
conflict (Awasthi 2006). 

The tsunami disaster presented an opportunity in the affected states to exert further 
influence in the direction of improving women’s property ownership. The general 
absence of land titles in some areas before the tsunami, both for men and for women, 
made it easier to incorporate gender considerations in assigning ownership. In Tamil 


Nadu state, new property titles have been jointly registered in the name of the female and 
male heads of the family in projects that were financed with World Bank credit. This 
same practice was encouraged in Pondicherry (World Bank 2005b). 

Strengthening and improving the law enforcement regime in general is an additional 
and indispensable element in moving closer to a gender-neutral legal infrastructure. This 
applies down to the level of training law enforcement officers and the maintenance of an 
accountability regime. After the tsunami, there were reports of some police officers 
abusing their authority vis-à-vis victims of the disaster in several countries. In India, it 
appears that some policemen stopped individual women on the road to demand a share of 
the relief supplies (Chopra 2005). While this was not a widespread occurrence, it 
underscores the importance of ensuring that the agents of the state themselves respect and 
enforce the letter and the spirit of the law. 

32. Knowledge dissemination. The 2005 Disaster Management Bill of India launched an 
ambitious plan to institutionalize disaster awareness and disaster management at all levels 
from the federal government to individual villages. The Community Based Disaster 
Preparedness component of this plan, as mentioned above, envisages a genuine 
involvement on the part of villagers in fleshing out village disaster plans after a centrally 
provided template. It plans for the consultation of elders in mapping the types of disaster 
that given villages have been particularly prone to in the past, and it calls for the 
establishment of preparedness and disaster response teams with specific tasks assigned as 
the responsibility of individual villagers. In association with this, large-scale disaster 
awareness campaigns are also envisaged, to be carried out through means such as rallies, 
street plays, school competitions, wall paintings and the distribution of relevant materials, 
as well as through mobilizing key individuals who can personally reach many others 
(Pervaiz et al. n.d.). 
The implementation of these plans in practice is yet to take place in most locations: 
the states with the highest exposure to natural disasters, as well as with more financial 
resources dedicated to disaster management than average, have progressed the furthest. 
Of larger concern, perhaps, is the extent to which the project environment truly fosters 
women’s participation in identifying priorities and leading disaster management. Women 
are encouraged to become members of the shelter management, search and rescue and 
first aid, and water and sanitation disaster management teams. While this in itself is 
positive, it also appears to imply that women’s participation in other teams, such as the 
early warning or the damage assessment teams, is not encouraged. 

In addition, shifting more disaster management authority to the level of the panchayat 
is laudable from the point of view of community participation in general, but it can raise 
concerns of its own from the point of view of women’s participation. Most panchayats 
are strongly male dominated, with little opportunity for the direct inclusion of women’s 
voices. If only a sub-section of a community is eligible for participation in consultation 
and decision-making over disaster preparedness, this does not only undermine the 
concept of beneficiary participation, but it may also lead to suboptimal outcomes in 
failing to make use of women’s perspectives and capacities. 

Knowledge dissemination has also been taking place through knowledge and training 
centres that have been set up by various NGOs in tsunami-affected states. Some of these 
have focused on providing training in practical skills, while others, such as the Madurai



based People’s Development Association, have provided training in health awareness and 
personality development, with more indirect benefits for increasing disaster resilience 
(The Hindu 2007). The M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation established Village 
Knowledge Centres in Tamil Nadu and in Pondicherry that provide a range of services 
from knowledge about natural disaster threats through information on fish movements to 
computer training (Disasterwatch.net n.d.) 

Gender and relief 

33. Community ownership. As mentioned above, the Government of Tamil Nadu set up 
village level tsunami relief committees a few weeks into the tsunami relief phase to 
collaborate in the administration of relief. Although one seat on the committee was 
reserved for a woman representative, women’s ability to meaningfully participate was put 
into question by the overwhelming dominance of the committees by the office bearers of 
the local fishermen’s association, and by the president of the local panchayat who was 
likely to have been male in all cases (World Bank 2005b). 
In a survey conducted in Nagapattinam and Cuddalore districts of Tamil Nadu, 
women indeed did report that while traditional leaders were part of the decision making 
process, there was no attempt to involve women’s groups in the relief effort. Women 
were also not represented in the weekly meetings of the leaders of the community 
fishermen, where decisions were taken over family related issues, and these decisions 
were considered final and binding. Women’s self help groups’ offices were used to store 
relief materials, and no alternative space was found for the women’s groups to meet (SSP 
and CCP 2005). 

34. Shelter. The central government considered the particular security needs of 
vulnerable children and women early on. The Ministry of Social Justice and 
Empowerment was entrusted with the task of overseeing relief measures for women and 
children in all of the affected states and union territories. Consequently, the Ministry 
coordinated with state authorities and NGOs in setting up short stay homes for affected 
women and children. In Tamil Nadu, 41 short stay homes for women had been authorized 
by the 7th of January 2005 to take tsunami victims. In Andaman, the office of the 
Secretary of the Andaman and Nicobar Social Welfare Board was being used as a home 
for women and children. A team of officers had also been sent to Pondicherry and Kerala 
to coordinate with state authorities and with NGOs on the long term rehabilitation of 
women and children (Government of India 2005a, 2005b, 2005c). It is uncertain, 
however, if the scale of the response matched the scale of the needs. 
Good practice 

The central government considered the particular security needs of vulnerable children 
and women early on. The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment was entrusted 
with the task of overseeing relief measures for women and children in all of the affected 
states and union territories. Consequently, the Ministry coordinated with state authorities 


and NGOs in setting up short stay homes for affected women and children. In Tamil 
Nadu, 41 short stay homes for women had been authorized by the 7th of January 2005 to 
take tsunami victims. In Andaman, the office of the Secretary of the Andaman and 
Nicobar Social Welfare Board was being used as a home for women and children. A team 
of officers had also been sent to Pondicherry and Kerala to coordinate with state 
authorities and with NGOs on the long term rehabilitation of women and children. 

In many cases, NGOs and the government consulted the beneficiaries on the design of 
temporary shelter as well as of longer-term housing that was built in the wake of the 
tsunami. Nevertheless, the Housing and Land Rights network reported in their survey of 
the quality of tsunami housing that glaring inadequacies, including several with gender-
specific implications, were found in many cases where agencies built shelter and housing 
without consulting local people, and without supervision from government authorities. 
The UN Special Rapporteur on adequate housing also suggested that “the failure to 
comply with human rights standards has deepened… the tragedy already afflicted on 
survivors” (Reuters 2006). 

Specific concerns included tiny or non-ventillated kitchens which made it impossible 
to cook, and cramped or nonexistent bathing spaces. Another survey found that in 
Pudupettai village, there was a toilet for every ten families, but a lack of water did not 
allow them to use the facilities. In many cases, one room was intended to accommodate 
living, sleeping and cooking arrangements, and the difficulties were compounded by the 
installation of wick stoves that were not only economically unviable, but that also omitted 
particularly high pollution in the form of carbon and hydrocarbon (Reuters 2006, SSP and 
CCP 2005). 

Lack of privacy and security for women in particular was also a concern. In southern 
Kanyakumari district, the tar-sheet walls of temporary shelters did not reach all the way 
up to the ceiling, “threatening women’s right to privacy”. Women also had anxieties 
about young men loitering in the night with shelter arrangements in close proximity to 
each other, and without secure doors and lights in many areas (Pincha et al. 2007, Reuters 
2006). 

Similarly, the poor construction of many shelters forced people to sleep in the open, 
which again raised problems of privacy and security. In some areas, this concern 
translated into health problems that affected men in particular. Where women slept inside 
but men slept outside due to lack of space, most men were found to have had insect bites 
that do not cure easily (Pincha et al. 2007). 

Problems that affected men as well as women included site selection. Communities 
reported an almost uniform lack of consultation over site selection for shelter and 
housing, with agencies choosing to build only on panchayat owned land even where these 
sites had a heightened vulnerability to natural hazards, and even where safer government 
owned land was available where the villagers would have been willing to relocate. 
Residents reported that many sites were in low-lying areas that get flooded in the 
monsoon season. In addition, in many cases contractors were hired for the construction of 
shelters who brought in labour from outside, instead of providing employment locally 
(SSP and CCP 2005). 


35. Aid distribution. Aid distribution was generally praiseworthy given the scale of the 
task. The shortfalls that did occur, however, had strong gender implications, as well as 
hitting certain vulnerable groups particularly hard. As far as central government design 
was concerned, an initial problematic aspect of aid distribution was that relief measures 
were targeted at fishermen, who were considered the heads of household. As money and 
rations were not reaching women proportionately, the State Commission for Women 
intervened, and the government distributed cash and rations directly to women the second 
or third time (Murthy 2005). 
Good practice 

Although in Tamil Nadu relief was targeted at fishermen in the initial stages of aid 
distribution, the government proved responsive to reports that under this design, relief 
was not reaching women equitably. Following an intervention by the State Commission 
for Women, the aid scheme was redesigned with a focus on women as initial recipients. 
While this scheme was also not ideal, its design was a considerable improvement on the 
initial arrangements. 

The redrafted distribution arrangements, while an improvement in some respects, 
were still not ideal. Households headed by disabled men, with no wives or adult sons, 
were left out of relief distribution schemes. The final pattern of aid distribution did not 
always correspond to the governmental design, either. In every location in Kancheepuram 
and Chennai districts that were visited by a Womankind Worldwide research team, the 
panchayat at some point pooled the rations and the money received, and redistributed 
among all the fishing tax paying households – in many places according to the number of 
males over 18 in the household. This obviously raised a great problem for those 
households that did not pay fishing tax and for ones that included few or no adult men. In 
addition, in some locations individual households’ share of women-targeted relief was 
delivered to women, while in some others it was given to men (Murthy 2005). Panchayat 
malpractice was reported in other locations as well (SSP and CCP 2005). 

Other vulnerable groups that experienced difficulty in receiving a full share of relief 
aid included the elderly, reportedly with the false assumption being made in their own 
community that they do not require much ration to survive (Pincha et al. 2007). In 
addition, scheduled castes and above all, scheduled tribes were subject to discrimination 
by the higher castes in the community when seeking access to relief material, and some 
NGOs reported protests by fishing communities when attempting to establish community 
kitchens to be shared with scheduled tribes (Guha-Sapir et al. 2006). In most cases where 
a community or some part of a community received less relief than was necessary, 
women bore the brunt of the food shortage (Murthy 2005). 

Finally, one specific group that has been consistently overlooked and discriminated 
against, including by the usual application of a two gender framework, is the Aravanis, 
who may be born inter sex or biologically male, dress in feminine clothes and generally 
consider themselves as neither women nor men. As most do not have ration cards, 
Aravanis did not have access to housing in the tsunami relief and reconstruction efforts. 


Ex-gratia relief aid was not paid to widowed Aravanis, nor did injured Aravanis receive 
the standard grant that was perceived for women and men only (Pincha et al. 2007). 

36. Aid composition. The federal Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment disbursed 
a sum of 11 lakh to the State Social Advisory Board of Andaman and Nicobar Islands, 
intended in particular for the special needs of lactating mothers and for children staying 
in tsunami relief camps (Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment 2005). There is no 
information on whether similar arrangements were provided in the other affected states 
and union territories. 
Several of the NGOs which provided relief packages did so with an awareness of 
women’s specific needs. One survey found that the Gandhian Unit for Integrated 
Development Education (Guide), the Centre for Women’s Development and Research 
(CWDR) and the Irula Tribal Women’s Welfare Society all provided sanitary pads, and 
initiated childcare centres. CWDR also included chudhidar sets for adolescent girls, who 
do not wear saris, the need for which was overlooked by most relief providers. Many aid 
agencies appear to have been less sensitive to women’s needs: there are reports that 
undergarments were absent from packages, and sanitary pads and adolescent girls’ 
clothing were rare. Burkas for Muslim women were also underprovided (Murthy 2005, 
Pincha et al. 2007). 

Good practice 

Several NGOs provided relief packages that were sensitive to women’s needs. The 
Gandhian Unit for Integrated Development Education (Guide), the Centre for Women’s 
Development and Research (CWDR) and the Irula Tribal Women’s Welfare Society 
provided sanitary pads, and initiated childcare centres. CWDR also included age-
appropriate clothing for adolescent girls, who do not wear saris. 

The federal Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment also disbursed a sum of 11 lakh 
to the State Social Advisory Board of Andaman and Nicobar Islands, intended in 
particular for the special needs of lactating mothers and for children staying in tsunami 
relief camps. 

The lack of firewood and fuel cakes in relief packages placed an additional burden on 
women, who were usually tasked with firewood collection for cooking. The destruction 
by the tsunami of much green cover as well as of livestock meant that women now had to 
walk longer for firewood, and spend more time collecting it (Pincha et al. 2007). 

Many women owned assets before the disaster, but were not compensated as part of 
the relief and rehabilitation measures. Some women whose husbands were not able 
bodied had functionally owned boats, catamarans and nets. After the tsunami, their assets 
were restored, but in the names of their sons and not of the women. According to some, 
this made the women vulnerable to their sons and led to a loss of self-respect (Pincha et 
al. 2007). 


The provision of cash relief was a complex issue with further gender implications. 
Many men spent cash aid on alcohol, presumably particularly when men were targeted to 
receive aid on behalf of the household. It is unclear, however, that the absence of cash aid 
would have eliminated the problem: there are also reports that some men exchanged 
rations for alcohol, too. It is well documented that hundreds of women from tsunami 
shelters and also from city slums have sold one of their kidneys out of financial 
desperation – some reported that they did so because their husbands “spent most of their 
daily income on liquor” (The Telegraph 2007). 

Gender and reconstruction 

37. Housing. With the erection of temporary shelters, as well as with the construction of 
permanent housing, there would have been more scope to make use of local skills and 
capacities, and in the process contribute to the revitalisation of the tsunami-hit regions. 
While construction is traditionally considered to be a job for men, women were also 
receptive to the possibility of participating in mason training and in construction 
supervision (SSP and CCP 2005). 
More conventionally, women also make thatch for housing as a livelihood source. 
After the tsunami, they were selling the thatch to middlemen at repressed prices, even 
though there was much scope for the government and for reconstruction agencies to link 
up with the women and purchase the thatch directly (Murthy 2005). 

38. Communal spaces. One of the key communal spaces to be reconstructed following 
the disaster were the aganwadis, a type of daycare centre established by the Government 
of India from 1975 onwards to improve the nutritional status of children and the 
nutritional and health awareness of mothers, encourage school enrollment and coordinate 
child immunisation projects. The government policy is to provide an anganwadi for every 
1000 families. 
As childrearing is usually taken to be the responsibility of women, the availability of 
suitable anganwadis may be considered a gender-specific issue. As the sites are normally 
specified by the panchayat, they are often in inferior locations that may be prone to 
flooding during the monsoon season, especially where a town merits more than one 
anganwadi. The access of scheduled caste groups to these facilities is a particular 
concern. Lower caste mothers and children are reportedly often left out of the 
beneficiaries selected to attend an anganwadi; when a worker is from a scheduled caste, 
some parents will not send their children there or will not allow them to eat food prepared 
by the worker (Southasiadisasters.net 2005). 

Women have also found it difficult to secure spaces to meet in an organized format. 
In Madhatikuppam village, the panchayat refused to provide a place for women’s groups 
to meet. In Chinnagudi village, women arranged for a women’s centre that was also used 
as a platform to sell fish, but the gram panchayat took it over and locked the centre (SSP 
and CCP 2005). 

39. New economic opportunities. There are many examples of good practice in the post-
tsunami facilitation of new economic opportunities, including the provision of skills, 

training and market opportunities for women. Finding alternative livelihoods is 
increasingly becoming an issue for men as well in traditional fishing communities, as fish 
stocks plummet. The effect of overfishing is further compounded in the case of women 
by changes in fish trade practices. Changes in market patterns has led fishermen to pool 
their catch to attract the attention of traders instead of handing it to their wives to market, 
and fish is increasingly sold directly to traders at the point of catch. A shift from 
processed fish trade to fresh fish trade, and the increasing availability of processed fish 
from other parts of the country has also led to a loss for processors, who have tended to 
be women (Salagrama 2006). 

Successful training programmes in alternative means of livelihood include courses 
offered around Chennai by the Disaster Mitigation Institute of Ahmedabad (Gujarat) in 
making coir, incense, candles and thatch, as well as in tailoring. Many other 
organizations are active in offering similar courses, and UN Goodwill Ambassador Bill 
Clinton has promoted the provision of internet access for women in tsunami hit villages 
so that they can market products without middlemen (which of course presumes that 
literacy, computer literacy and marketing skills had also been acquired). Community 
training for younger women has also been provided by older women leaders and tsunami 
survivors (Disaster Watch 2007). 

The type of training offered and the occupations promoted can be a socially sensitive 
issue so that economic efficiency should not be the only consideration when devising 
such courses. Some livelihoods are easier to support than others because they are seen as 
more socially acceptable. One concern from the outset is that social relations are 
influenced in many fishing villages by the position an individual occupies in relation to 
fishing. As fishing is a relatively prestigious occupation, the further removed the type of 
work from fishing, the less prestigious it may appear. Some occupations are also seen as 
the reserve of the scheduled castes: basket weaving, for instance, is seen as inferior for 
this reason and NGO offered training has been rejected for this reason in the past 
(Salagrama 2006). 

While there are obstacles to the performance of non-traditional work, however, these 
should not be overstated. Indeed, social restructuring has taken place as a result in a 
number of locations after the tsunami that appears to have been driven primarily from the 
bottom up. There is much anecdotal evidence that activities that would have previously 
been considered out of bounds for women are now accepted by the men in the 
community as well. According to an Oxfam analyst, “even in the early days after the 
tsunami there was a lot of resistance by men in the Naucherpettai village of Cuddalore 
when it was suggested that women be made collective owners of the boats being 
distributed in the village. ‘But people are more open to such ideas now.’” 

Nineteen-year old Sudha from Keechankuppam, who has been taking a vocational 
course in shoe-making, reports that “initially, her fisherman father and fish vendor 
mother had reservations about letting her do the training. But now, says Sudha, her father 
is proud of what she is doing. “There’s more acceptance now for women to engage in 
work other than fish vending,” says Sudha, who plans to start her own shoe-making 
business once she completes her training.” As a final testimony of the depth of the change 
that occurred in some places: “earlier, even the suggestion of a trip outside the village 
would mean a severe beating from my husband,” says 31-year-old Sugna. But now, when 
Sugna goes to the district headquarters with other women to press for more tsunami aid, 


her husband cooks for the family” (Chopra 2005). A word of caution is nevertheless once 
again in order: setting out to actively change gender imbalances could also backfire if 
handled without appropriate sensitivity, tact, and an appreciation of the limits of what 
may be achieved in a given time frame and in a given culture. 

Good practice 

Samudram represents an outstanding display of changes in the traditional depiction of 
woman as the eternal martyr. It developed as a state-level federation of women 
fishworkers’ organizations in 1993, with the objective of ‘empowering women 
fishworkers in all aspects of life’. The headquarters of the organization is at Kothuru 
village in Chatrapur block of Ganjam district, and its membership exceeds 2 000 women 
in the districts of Ganjam and Puri. The organization has also spread to Balasore and 
Bhadrak districts in the north. Members of Samudram have been assuming increasingly 
powerful roles in managing the daily affairs of the community. The key to their success 
lies in the way they involve local youth groups, traditional panchayats, or councils, and 
Panchayati Raj institutions in their programmes by demonstrating convincingly that 
women’s problems are problems of the whole community. Samudram has mobilized 
against issues as diverse as the sale and consumption of country liquor, gambling, child 
marriage, illiteracy, medical quackery, moneylenders, low wages, teacher absenteeism in 
government schools and malfunctioning of the PDS. In some villages, women’s groups 
took over management of the PDS. Samudram has also been active in protests against the 
invasion of trawlers, violation of the Coastal Regulation Zone Act, and collection of 
shrimp seed, besides demanding the inclusion of women in various government support 
schemes. 
Most women have become literate enough to negotiate and strike good bargains for 
their produce. There are many women in the villages trained to take care of emergency 
medical needs. In most of the villages, moneylenders have been expelled and group 
members take care of their credit needs with their own funds. Many services in the 
villages – health, education, community strengthening and credit and savings 
programmes – have now been taken over by the women’s groups, which make payments 
to teachers and health assistants and maintain records. One important feature of 
Samudram is that its leadership is dispersed widely over different villages, so there is 
little possibility of the emergence of a single concentrated power centre. Although it is a 
collective of fishworkers’ organizations, each organization has its own programme and 
agenda and the freedom to discuss and debate its extent of involvement in Samudram 
activities. The same relationship exists between Samudram and the Orissa Traditional 
Marine Fishworkers Union (a men’s body), which operate side by side. 

Source: Salagrama (2006), p. 60. 

One area in which training continues to lag behind, and which could bring great 
benefits, is in the provision of language skills. In many areas, locals only speak dialects 
that are not recognised widely outside their area – this applies particularly to women 
(Salagrama 2006). The ability to understand and communicate in more widely spoken 
languages would have economic payoffs as well as increasing communities’ disaster 


resilience through facilitating access to information from outside sources, and increasing 
the ability of locals to defend their interests in political venues. 


The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami -Thailand 
40. The tsunami in Thailand. The 2004 tsunami in Thailand was one of the most 
devastating natural disasters in the country’s history. Thailand was not the hardest hit of 
the countries affected by the tsunami: the death toll, at over 8000 persons (counting also 
the missing) was the fourth largest after Indonesia, Sri Lanka and India. The economic 
damage sustained was the fifth largest among the affected countries in absolute terms 
(EM-DAT). Accounting for economic losses as well – or the longer-term impact on 
economic flows – makes Thailand the second most affected country: at US$ 2 199 
million, this was the equivalent of 1.3% of national GDP (ADPC n.d). 
In the national and the local context, the overwhelming nature of the tsunami impact 
becomes yet clearer. In Thailand’s history of natural disasters, flood and draught had 
affected larger numbers of people, but the 2004 tsunami was the deadliest (Figure X). 
The economic impact is harder to compare owing to the employment of different 
assessment methodologies, but the tsunami also appears to have inflicted one of the worst 
economic losses ever experienced. 

Figure X: The ten highest impact recorded natural disasters in Thailand 

Disaster 
Date 
Total 
Killed 
Wave 
/ 
Surge 
26-Dec-2004 
8,345 
Wind 
Storm 
27-Oct-1962 
769 
Flood 
19-Nov-1988 
664 
Wave 
/ 
Surge 
Jun-1955 
500 
Wind 
Storm 
3-Nov-1989 
458 
Flood 
3-Jan-1975 
239 
Flood 
1-Aug-1995 
231 
Flood 
28-Oct-1995 
200 
Flood 
20-Aug-2006 
164 
Flood 
Oct-2002 
154 


Disaster 
Date 
Total 
Affected 
Flood 
30-Jun-1996 
5,000,000 
Drought 
Feb-2002 
5,000,000 
Flood 
1-Aug-1995 
4,280,984 
Flood 
Oct-2002 
3,289,420 
Flood 
3-Jan-1975 
3,000,093 
Drought 
Mar-1991 
2,500,000 
Flood 
Jul-2000 
2,500,000 
Flood 
20-Aug-2006 
2,212,413 
Wind 
Storm 
17-Aug-1991 
1,894,238 
Flood 
Aug-1978 
1,628,400 


Source: EM-DAT 

Locally, the impact was devastating. Over 400 fishing communities were hit, many of 
whom were already struggling to make ends meet before the tsunami (UN Country Team 
Thailand n.d.). While large numbers of foreign tourists and middle class Thais also lost 
their lives, highly vulnerable social groups, such as sea gypsies, Burmese migrants and 
Thai speakers without citizenship were overrepresented among those affected by the 
disaster. The magnitude of the economic impact in the tsunami-hit region was equivalent 
to 50% of the combined gross provincial product (GPP), rising up to 90% of GPP in the 
case of Phuket province. Infrastructure, housing and other social sectors were affected, 
but the productive sector bore a staggering 97% of the impact. Within this, damage and 


losses in the tourism sector added up to 71 972 million Baht, followed by a distant 
runner-up of 6 481 million Baht in impact on fisheries (ADPC n.d.). 

In addition, one of the greatest concerns in the wake of the tsunami was the damage 
inflicted upon the environment. This is an area that is home to some of the world’s most 
diverse coral reef ecosystems. Some 13% of the total reef area suffered significant 
damage, rising up to 80% on the islands’ western coast. Seagrass beds, which provide an 
important food source for many endangered species, and mangrove forests were also 
impacted, with salt water intrusion contaminating inland surface and ground water. 
Human activity had already interfered with natural barriers that could have limited the 
impact of the tsunami: many of the coastal sand dunes had been levelled to make way for 
beach resorts and infrastructure, and coastal development had replaced much of the 
mangrove and beach forests along the shores that could in some areas have broken the 
force of the waves (UN Country Team Thailand n.d., Thanawood et al. 2006). 

41. Response. The response of the Thai government and of national civil society and the 
private sector to the tsunami was remarkable. Despite the scale of the disaster, the 
government was able to launch a swift and effective operation, building on a clear legal 
framework and the associated structural arrangements. The 1979 Civil Defence Act and 
the 2002 Civil Defence Plan had placed the disaster management under the direct 
authority of the Prime Minister, acting primarily via the Department for Disaster 
Prevention and Mitigation in the Interior Ministry, and via the National Civil Defence 
Council. Through the latter, the Royal Thai Armed Forces were brought into the response 
framework and provided much needed local support. 
The government set up a crisis coordination centre in Phuket, which the affected 
provinces replicated at provincial city halls. The centres provided assistance to the 
victims and their families, including the thousands of foreign tourists needing to be 
repatriated. Relief operation centres were linked with a special communication system to 
coordinate information on the missing, and 24 hour call centres were set up to provide 
information to the public. 

Line ministries and agencies were also incorporated in the effort: the Ministry of 
Public Health mobilised over two hundred doctors who moved immediately to the 
affected area, and set up a command centre in Phuket to coordinate emergency medical 
response and epidemic surveillance. As part of the medium and long-term recovery 
strategy, the Ministry of Interior paid compensation for loss of lives and for injuries, 
while the Ministry of Labour disbursed compensation for loss of livelihoods, and the 
Ministry of Education lent financial support to affected students and teachers. The 
Agricultural Ministry and the military assisted fishermen in the repair and building of 
fishing boats, the Ministry of Natural Resources was made responsible for clean water 
sources and monitoring water quality and supply, and housing was overseen by the 
Ministry of Interior in cooperation with the Ministry of Social Development and Human 
Security and the Thai military. 

While the system was particularly effective in the early response stages, some 
problems inevitably arose. One set of difficulties related to the management of 
contributions at the local level. On the one hand, many tsunami victims complained of 
staff shortages, and insufficient guidance about compensation. On the other hand, there 
was little communication to channel the outpouring of national and international 


generosity, so that the management of large quantities of inappropriate in-kind donations, 
as well as the arrival of many inexperienced volunteers, placed a considerable strain on 
the disaster management authorities who were already overstretched. 

A more serious criticism that emerged during the implementation of the national 
tsunami response was the limited space that was provided for civil society and 
community participation. While the strong top-down direction of the disaster response 
strategy is likely to have enhanced the speed and effectiveness of relief response, the 
urgency was not quite as pressing in reconstruction and recovery. Civil society did 
provide and receive support at the provincial level, but it generally had little opportunity 
to contribute inputs for priority setting and on the details of the tsunami response 
strategy. This is likely to have aggravated oversights in the case of highly vulnerable and 
marginalised groups such as immigrants and Thais without citizenship, and it appears to 
have excluded the voice of women from a host of issues such as shelter design (UN 
Country Team Thailand n.d., Pinat n.d., APWLD 2006). 

Contributions from the civil society and the private sector, nevertheless, were a major 
feature of the relief and reconstruction effort. The generosity of financial and in-kind 
support was such that by the 31st December 2004, the governor of Phang Nga had 
appealed to people to stop sending relief items (UN Country Team Thailand n.d.). Some 
emergency needs, such as the provision of bottled water, were entirely covered by private 
and NGO contributions. Business and employer associations provided vocational training 
and skills upgrading, and several NGOs supported specific target groups according to 
their expertise, including assistance from the Foundation for Women for women 
survivors. 

Thailand did not appeal for international financial assistance, but technical support, 
equipment and direct support to the affected communities by international partners was 
very much welcomed by the government. The largest portion of technical support was 
managed by the United Nations Country Team, including the World Bank, with US$ 23.4 
million in disbursements. The UN mobilised relief funds and support within 24 hours of 
the disaster. In January 2005 a Sub-Committee for the Coordination of International 
Assistance was set up, with the UNDP providing lead support in environmental 
restoration, the FAO in geophysical hazard management, and the World Bank and the 
UNDP in livelihood restoration (UN Country Team Thailand n.d.). 

Gender and preparedness 

42. Data. The Thai National Statistical Office (NSO) collects and publishes gender 
statistics, although the data does not appear to be updated very frequently. The data 
ranges from health and education through economic status to crime and violence, but the 
available data in some key areas such as HIV-AIDS infection rates and domestic and 
sexual violence is extremely patchy. As the NSO notes, domestic violence is rarely 
reported in Thailand, with other cases of violence and AIDS infection rates also likely to 
be vastly underreported. 
The World Development Indicators and Thai national statistics together suggest that 
there is little difference between the genders in conventionally reported areas such as 
labour force participation or literacy rates. More detailed statistics on the type of 


employment and wage rates, however, reveal that despite improvements, women as a 
group remain at a disadvantage in the economy. Women are disproportionately likely to 
be employed as unpaid family workers, and in lower grade jobs in the private as well as 
the public sector. Women also continue to be underrepresented in elected office and in 
political appointments. 

Female Male 
Adult mortality rate (per 1000, probability of dying between 15-60 yrs) a 129 258 
Adult participation in labour force (%)a 70.7 84.6 
Employed as unpaid family worker (%) in 1998b 43.7 18.4 
% distribution of directors by gender in private sector in 1998b 22.8 77.2 
Adult literacy rate (%)a 91 95 
Number of Governors c 1 75 
Parliamentary seats (%)c 10 90 
Village heads (%)c 3.3 96.7 
Female-headed households (%) in 1996b 24.% 
Maternal mortality ratio (per 100 000 live births) a 24 

a Source: World Development Indicators, 2006 
b Source: National Statistical Office Thailand 
c Source: UNDP 2006a 

There are no official gender disaggregated statistics on the loss of lives in Thailand in 
the 2004 tsunami. Even rough estimates are hard to come by: some have used data for 
this purpose from the Red Cross country offices on reported deaths of Thai nationals, 
which is broken down by sex, and data from the Ministry of Education on the number of 
children and students orphaned by the tsunami, which is broken down by the sex of the 
lost parent (see Figure X). These two data sources, however, can be interpreted as 
providing conflicting pictures of the gender ratio of those who perished. While the Red 
Cross reports that in Phang Nga – alone among the affected provinces – more men died 
than women, the Ministry of Education found that more children lost their mother in 
Phang Nga than those who lost their father. The sources could not be verified, so it is not 
possible to draw a conclusion on gender differences in the tsunami mortality rates. 

Figure X 

Province Men 
reported 
dead 
Women 
reported 
dead 
Phuket 153 219 
Ranong 18 31 
Phang Nga 200 187 
Krabi 32 46 
Satun 4 4 
Trang N/A N/A 

Province No. of 
children who 
lost father 
No. of 
children who 
lost mother 
Phuket 73 60 
Ranong 33 24 
Phang Nga 183 308 
Krabi 70 31 
Satun 9 1 
Trang 18 16 

54 



Source: APWLD 2006 

In addition to the lack of data on any differential impact of the tsunami on women and 

on men, data is also extremely patchy when it comes to several highly vulnerable and 

marginalised groups. In 2005 there were approximately 900 000 Burmese migrant 

workers registered in Thailand, but the true number of this group is likely to be 

considerably higher. Registration is expensive, complex, and involves the provision of 

permanent address in Burma, which is a concern for many who fear reprisals by the 

Burmese government on their families. Significant numbers of these workers were 

employed in Southern Thailand, where there was a particularly high demand for female 

labour in the informal sector. 

Unregistered migrant workers have no recourse against maltreatment by employers, 

nor can they access government aid schemes. Burmese women workers are particularly 

vulnerable to abuse and neglect because in addition to their unregistered status and to 

gender power inequalities, they have very little formal or informal education, including 

on reproductive health. About 20% are estimated to have primary education, 5% to have 

some secondary education, and the rest have no education at all. Many work in the sex 

industry, in conditions of extreme vulnerability. The paucity of reliable data on migrant 

workers, let alone gender-segregated data on the impact of the tsunami on this group, is 

therefore no surprise. As an illustration of the extent of the problem, the Ministry of 

Labour registered the death of altogether 9 migrant workers in the tsunami. By contrast, 

the Network of Migrant Workers and International Organisation for Migration conducted 

a study finding that 217 migrant workers died in Ban Nam Kem village and its vicinity 

alone (APWLD 2006). 

Stateless communities are even more vulnerable than migrant workers as a group. 

When surveys were prepared for the national border demarcation between Thailand and 

Burma by the British during colonial times, a group of people living in the hills and the 

jungles in the area were left out of the mapping exercise. As a result, the descendants of 

these culturally Thai people have no nationality, no birth certificates or identity 

documents, and no right to vote; they are not protected by the Thai or the Burmese legal 

system, they have no labour or property rights, and they lack access to public services, 

including education. Many of these people now live in the tsunami-affected Ranong 

province, but there is no record of how many died and how many were reached by relief 

efforts. 

A similar situation applies to ethnic minority groups that are known as sea gypsies or 

nomads. These groups migrated to the Andaman coast from the Malaysian peninsula and 

Burma around 200 years ago. They, too, are not recognised as Thai citizens and are 

excluded from the protection of the law. Marginalised and socially discriminated against, 

they earn income from collecting seashells and using their boats for transporting tourists, 

with many of the women also providing cheap and easily exploitable labour in the service 

sector. In the absence of citizenship and its attendant protections, members of ethnic 

minorities were also excluded from official records used to designate the recipients of 

post-tsunami government aid. 


43. Legal infrastructure. The legal provisions with regards to women’s ownership of 
property are largely positive, and there also aren’t any social constraints on women’s 
property rights. The traditional inheritance system does not privilege sons over daughters: 
the major assets usually go to the child who lived with the parents following marriage, 
and the youngest or the unmarried daughter inherits the land on which the family house is 
situated. When a married man dies, his widow many inherit control over the property, 
and sons rarely contest her right to do so. The rural regions of Thailand used to have a 
matrifocal social system, and it is still common practice for a man to live with his wife’s 
relatives and social group after marriage. 
Until recently, registering marriage did put women in a disadvantaged situation. Land 
and other assets owned by the woman may not have remained solely in her name, and 
married women were restricted from entering into legal contracts by themselves. The 
permission of the husband was required for all transactions, including obtaining a 
passport; there were no similar restrictions that would have applied to men. As a result of 
public pressure from the women’s movement in Thailand, the approval of both spouses is 
now required for any legal document to be valid (Tonguthai et al. 1998). 

Thai women are still more likely to experience financial hardship as a result of 
current divorce custom: although the law permits the payment of a living allowance to the 
spouse judged to be the innocent party, four out of five divorced women are left to raise 
their children on their own without maintenance or child support payments from the 
father (Tonguthai et al. 1998). This aspect of the legal system as applied in practice does 
increase the vulnerability of divorced women with children, and can affect their ability to 
recover from natural disasters. Overall, however, the general legal infrastructure is not 
biased against women or men in a way that would reduce their disaster resilience. 

Specific vulnerable groups, by contrast, are made highly vulnerable to natural 
disasters by some aspects of the legal system as applied to these groups. Within the 
affected communities, women are likely to be particularly disadvantaged due to the 
multiple discrimination they suffer: because of their gender within their communities, and 
because of their group belonging within the legal context. We have already detailed the 
consequences of the absence of sea gypsies, Thais without citizenship and many Burmese 
migrants from official records and from national identity registries. Many communities in 
these groups also do not have their land rights legally recognised, which became a 
particularly acute issue in the aftermath of the tsunami. 

Under Thai law, landless people can apply for legal title to a plot of land after ten 
years of continuous occupation. In practice, the ethnic minorities living along the coast 
had settled there generations ago, evidenced by burial grounds and aerial photographs, 
yet their title has been contested in many cases. Much of the land concerned is prime real 
estate, and highly desirable from the point of view of tourism development. After the 
tsunami, communities have been prevented from resettling in affected areas; several 
NGOs have reported that speculators had obtained documents issued in their names or 
had land purchase records back-dated through ambiguous means (APWLD 2006, ACHR 
2006b). As a consequence, 83 out of the 412 villages affected by the tsunami have been 
facing problems relating to land tenure and resettlement, with many communities blocked 
from returning to their original settlements (UN Country Team Thailand n.d.). 


44. Early warning and knowledge dissemination. Thailand had no operational tsunami 
warning facility at the time when the 2004 disaster struck. Events of this type were 
considered extremely rare in the area; in any event, it is questionable how useful such a 
system would have been on its own against a background of poor communication 
systems and little local awareness of the nature of the disaster. Indeed, one factor that 
greatly aggravated the loss of life was that coastal inhabitants did not react even when 
they noticed the suddenly receiving tide that signaled the approaching tsunami 
(Thanawood et al. 2006). 
Very interestingly, the one group that appears to had been able to reach safety were 
an ethnic minority living in Phang Nga and Phuket provinces. The Mogen appear to have 
retained indigenous knowledge and an oral history that enabled them to correctly 
interpret the nature of the sea level change, and to seek safety at the first signs of the 
approaching disaster. Some of their villages were destroyed entirely, but the loss of life 
appears to have been minimal (Shoocongdej 2005). 

In response to the events of December 2004, the Royal Thai Government provided for 
the establishment of a National Disaster Warning Centre (NDWC), intended primarily to 
gather and process critical information on impending natural disasters, and to issue public 
warnings as necessary. Over 65 disaster warning towers have been installed in the coastal 
provinces, and the NDWC has been planning to extend its telecommunications networks 
to cover a range of natural hazards. 

The establishment of this early warning system has been complemented by measures 
intended to reduce disaster vulnerability, including knowledge dissemination activities in 
local communities. Training materials have been prepared for local residents explaining 
what to do in the event of another tsunami. Residents, including schoolchildren, have also 
participated in tsunami evacuation drills. 

One concern over these efforts to promote preparedness is the extent to which some 
of the more vulnerable segments of the population were reached. An International 
Organisation for Migration (IOM) rapid assessment showed that migrants’ knowledge of 
disasters did not suggest a level of preparedness comparable to that of the Thai 
population (UN Country Team Thailand 2006). As a result, the IOM partnered with 
Thailand’s Department of Disaster Preparation and Mitigation and with the German 
International Aid Agency to organize a tsunami early warning evacuation exercise in 
which Burmese migrant workers were included. In collaboration with local NGOs, the 
IOM also distributed cheap radio sets and information materials in migrant communities. 

There is little information in English about the content of the training materials that 
formed part of the knowledge dissemination activities, which may be an important issue 
as far as gender mainstreaming is concerned. If these materials were based on the Thai 
government’s disaster handbook or that of the Asian Disaster Preparedness Centre, the 
likelihood is that there is little attention devoted to gender-specific concerns, as these 
considerations are missing from the aforementioned texts. Similarly, it is not established 
what format the information materials assumed, but if crucial information was distributed 
in the form of printed text, a considerable proportion of Burmese migrant women – the 
social group with the highest proportion of functional illiterates – may have been 
unwittingly excluded from benefiting from the preparedness campaign. 


A remaining concern is the question of the effectiveness of the knowledge 
dissemination activities. In a survey conducted by a World Bank-Japan Social 
Development Fund team to assess the emergency response, over 80% of respondents 
reported to have received no training on how to cope in the event of a future tsunami, or 
how to administer first aid (Thongyou and Ayuwat 2007). 

Gender and relief 

45. Shelters.3 The establishment of temporary tent camps and the construction of 
temporary housing was co-ordinated by a special sub-committee set up by the 
government immediately after the tsunami, under the direction of the Ministry of Social 
Development and Human Security. In general, construction was swift and efficient. 
Gender-specific needs and capabilities, however, do not appear to have been a concern, 
which placed a particular burden on women, but affected men as well. 
Relief camps and temporary shelter – and ultimately, permanent housing – were 
constructed by the political authorities, by the Thai military and by various NGOs and 
private organizations. Most tent camps about which there is data appear to have suffered 
a common set of problems, including a severe shortage of functioning hygienic facilities, 
mostly situated at a considerable distance from the tents. In the Tak Boirsat settlement 
camp, for instance, there were 40 toilets for 2000 people, but only five were in working 
condition. Worse, women appear to have felt insecure to a degree that many felt the need 
to be accompanied by a male relative when they needed to avail themselves of these 
facilities, especially at night. There were soldiers in the camps, but there were also 
reports from some camps that the soldiers were drinking during duty. While the great 
urgency and the sheer scale of the need made many of these shortcomings 
understandable, better disaster preparedness and gender-sensitive contingency templates 
for shelter plans may have downscaled these problems. The specific problem of an 
atmosphere of insecurity fuelled by the alcohol consumption of soldiers could have been 
addressed by enforcing a ban on drinking while on duty. 

Temporary housing was completed within the space of two weeks, on average. Its 
exact format varied according to the agency responsible for the construction, but again, 
there were some common features with negative implications for women and for men. 
Living conditions were typically cramped, with a usual setup of 3 m2 per family. There 
were usually no partitions, so that couples had next to no privacy, which is likely to have 
placed great additional strains on families. As similar arrangements were elsewhere 
linked to increased rates of domestic violence and sexual violence outside the dwelling 
areas, it is possible that the phenomenon was experienced by those living in the Thai 
post-tsunami shelters as well. 

Temporary housing was also typically constructed such that each unit was supplied 
with a toilet as well as with access to electricity and water, but the houses lacked 
kitchens. This became a concern as many families remained in temporary housing for six 
months to a year, and some even longer. In the initial period, the temporary dwelling 
areas were well supplied with food, but as the official deadline for moving into 
permanent housing approached services were, unsurprisingly, wound down. Even while 
food was accessible within the housing area, this arrangement meant that women were 

3 This section draws heavily on APWLD (2006). 


not able to fulfill one of the central roles that was socially expected of them, which was to 
cook for the family. The resulting stress was compounded by the fact that there were few 
other activities available to women through which they could have compensated for this: 
while men left in search of work outside the household, women typically stayed behind in 
the cramped living spaces with the children. 

The last considerable concern relating to the shelter arrangements was their 
accessibility for marginalized groups. In general, those who had certificates of previous 
house ownership were given preference over those without both at assigning temporary 
shelter and in providing permanent housing. This created particular difficulties for 
women who worked in the informal and the entertainment sectors, many of whom did not 
have the required certificates, as well as for men and women who had moved from 
different areas of the country and were renting accommodation, and who lived in 
communities whose land ownership was not recognized in the first instance. Etnic 
minorities in general did find access to temporary shelter, after those with certificates 
were provided for. 

Again, the most vulnerable group were the Burmese migrant workers: many of those 
who had been in the country and employed legally hid in the forests as well, fearing 
deportation as their official documents had been washed away in the tsunami. When the 
situation eased, unless NGOs provided for them, the migrant workers had to rent rooms, 
the cost of which had gone up by almost 50% after the disaster at the same time when 
their wages plummeted. Consequently, it was not uncommon for up to ten families to be 
sharing a small rented room, which reproduced the problems of the crowded tsunami 
shelters on an even larger scale. 

46. Aid distribution. The basic relief supplies appear to have been sufficient and to have 
reached everyone with a regular status. As with the other aspects of the disaster 
management system, however, the most vulnerable groups such as the migrant workers 
were often excluded from government-run schemes. In the first few days many of them 
were hiding for fear of deportation, so that initially NGO aid did not reach all migrant 
workers either. 
Access to relief assistance also became problematic for some registered Thai citizens 
when it came to compensation support. Information dissemination was concentrated on 
the temporary shelters under the assumption that this is where the affected persons could 
be reached. Some, however, were in hospital, others were searching for their loved ones, 
so that the information did not reach them on time. By the time they found out and 
applied for compensation, many were told that the funds had run out, or could not be 
administered because deadlines had passed. 

Another aspect of the compensation scheme had a more direct gender implication. 
The government provided compensation after family members who died in the tsunami, 
the amount of which was highest where the head of the household had perished. The 
government policy provided that compensation should be the same for both male and 
female heads of household. However, social perceptions of the man as the breadwinner 
meant in some cases that unless the woman was officially registered as the head of the 
household, for instance on a housing certificate, government officials erroneously 
assumed that the man was the household head, and would not administer the 
corresponding amount when the woman died. Similarly, in cases where the official head 


of household was male but had not been able to perform this role due to illness or 
disability, there were no allowances made for these circumstances. 

Finally, post-tsunami relief aid distribution has been criticized on the grounds that 
women were not encouraged to participate in the process – or in the management of the 
shelters in general –, and indeed in some shelters there was effectively no community 
participation. Government regulations required that temporary sites be managed by a 
village head or local official body. As the primary priority appeared to be the creation of 
a clear centralised management system, little effort was made to actively reach out and 
incorporate other voices in the community. Consequently, reports have emerged charging 
that in some shelters, such as in Lam Pom, aid was not distributed equitably to each 
family, and there was no information provided on cash donations. There is little 
information on how this affected gender relations, but the chances that gender-specific 
concerns were addressed in shelter management and aid distribution are smaller than if 
women had been consulted. 

47. Aid composition. Relief supplies appear to have adequately taken into account 
women’s specific needs, such as sanitary pads and undergarments. The health services 
also provided special care for pregnant women. The complaints that did emerge tended to 
be focused on the demeanour of the health personnel – women surveyed have commented 
that the medical staff did not behave with sensitivity to their vulnerable condition. A 
specific concern that was also shared by a number of women was that doctors failed to 
inform them that stopping menstruating could be a normal phenomenon during times of 
stress. This may also be indicative of a need for more comprehensive reproductive health 
education. 
A particularly positive aspect of aid delivery was in fact the collaboration between 
UNFPA, the Department of Health and the World Vision Foundation of Thailand to 
provide a range of health services in the affected communities. The largest programmes 
focused on maternal and child health, family planning services and HIV prevention, not 
only in terms of providing services at the point of delivery, but also in offering training, 
research, supplies and equipment in the tsunami-hit areas. The programmes were 
designed from the start for two target communities: Thai citizens affected by the tsunami, 
and migrant worker communities, reaching out in the process to some of the most 
vulnerable groups in Thai society. 

Good practice 

In January 2005, UNFPA conducted a field based needs assessment in the four 
provinces most affected by the tsunami, in collaboration with the Department of Health, 
the Institute for Population and Social Research, and World Vision Foundation Thailand. 
Based on the recommendations from this mission, a number of projects were created to 
address the needs of the local population and the migrants in the areas of safe 
motherhood, family planning, gender equality, HIV prevention, and adolescent 
reproductive health. Post-traumatic counselling was also provided. 

Source: UNFPA (2005a, 2005b) 


In the provision of mid-term aid, government assistance for parents with children 
suffered from a blind spot. The help that was offered was targeted at school age children, 
and a condition of eligibility was that children return to school and go through 
registration. Parents with pre-school age children did not receive specific government 
support, which put many widows and working single parents – usually women – in a very 
difficult situation (APWLD 2006). 

Gender and reconstruction 

48. Recovering losses. As was already detailed above, there were some groups within the 
communities affected by the tsunami who did not receive government compensation or 
services that they were entitled to, or who received less compensation than they should 
have, a large proportion of whom were women. Putting right the mistakes that were 
made, and even the straightforward navigation of some government initiatives were 
beyond the capability of many, especially against the background of other tsunami-
related stress, and for those who lost important documents to the waves. 
The Asia Foundation has been working through the Women Lawyers Association of 
Thailand to provide legal aid and rights protection in Ranong, Phang Nga and Phuket 
(UN Country Team Thailand n.d). The project is financed by the Japan Social 
Development Fund via the World Bank. The services offered include free consultation on 
rights and legal issues, the sponsorship of administrative costs and translation for those 
whose first language is not Thai, the recovery of lost documents, assistance with travel to 
courts and to lawyer consultations, and pro bono representation in courts. Clients have 
also received assistance with secondary issues that affect their ability to pursue their 
rights, such as medical and psychological treatment and urgent humanitarian relief. The 
organization has also accepted cases of legal assistance over land dispute issues, which 
has been too politically sensitive to assist financially or otherwise for other bilateral and 
international agencies (T-LAC 2006). 

49. New economic opportunities. Restoring livelihoods and creating new economic 
opportunities is of fundamental importance to all in a post-disaster context. In Southern 
Thailand, however, there were additional reasons why it was particularly important for 
women to find jobs in the legal economy after the tsunami. Young women who lost their 
jobs as a result of the disaster and who were left without many options were feared to be 
in danger of being forced into commercial sex work. Concomitantly, rates of poverty, 
including child poverty which is linked to the economic situation of the providing parent, 
and rates of HIV infections and other diseases were feared to rise (UN Country Team 
Thailand 2006). 
World Vision, Oxfam and other NGOs provided a significant share of the support that 
affected communities received for strengthening their economic opportunities. Boats and 
fishing equipment were provided alongside with boat building skills training. Oxfam 
have secured the active participation of the beneficiaries in livelihood building programs 
and equal access to resources by making strategic use of community-based revolving 
fund schemes. World Vision, the Thaicraft Association and other organisations have been 
working with women towards developing skills for new livelihoods, from producing 
quality handicrafts to management training. The numerous smaller scale initiatives 


included Plan International’s arrangements for a Moken Women’s Group to be trained in 
bakery, boat building, massage and spa skills (UN Country Team Thailand n.d). 

Good practice 

The Austrian government, Austrian NGOs and the Austrian Federal Chamber of 
Commerce partnered to create the Austria-Phuket Community Centre in Kho Siray. The 
centre was designed to function as a training centre, handicraft centre and health centre, 
and it also offers a public library, a nursery and a daycare centre. Local women have the 
possibility to participate in the seminars and training courses, during which they can 
leave their children in the centre’s daycare facility. 

Source: UN Country Team Thailand n.d. 

The main constraint to the sustainability of many income generation groups appears 
to have been the poverty of business management skills in the affected communities, 
combined with poor planning on the part of some managers of the employment 
rehabilitation schemes. Some projects relied overly on the presence of outside NGOs for 
access to their markets, which collapsed after the organizations wound down their 
activities in these communities. There are also reports of unfulfilled demand for group 
management skills, which created internal conflicts in particular over questions of 
transparency (APWLD 2006). These reports were also supported by a survey that found 
over four-fifths of respondents not to have received any training in project management 
and in conflict management (Thongyou and Ayuwat 2007). 

Good practice 

Located in a small compound in downtown Phuket, the UNICEF-supported Life Home 
Project accepts HIV-positive women and children from local hospitals and provides them 
with a safe and caring environment in which they can recover. The support that is 
provided is not exhausted by medical care: beyond emotional support, the project offers 
vocational training and small loans to those women who have recovered sufficiently to 
help set up their own businesses and reach self-sufficiency in the future. 

Source: UN Country Team Thailand 2006 


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