GENDER DEVELEPMENT AND DISASTER

1. Why is gender important for disaster risk reduction work?

 In the Disaster Risk Reduction community, there is broad understanding that
gender equality when women and men enjoy equal rights, opportunities and
entitlements in civil and political life is a fundamental part of increased resilience
to disasters.
 Evidence suggests that gender-based inequalities shape who is impacted by
disasters; for example, after the food price crisis of female-headed households
were 1.6 times more likely than male-headed households to be food insecure
 However, data has also shown that addressing these inequalities has positive
outcomes; when women and men receive DRR trainings, they share leadership
roles, and their differential knowledge on the impacts of natural hazards is
integrated into disaster risk reduction, community resilience is enhanced
 Interventions that promote more equitable gender relations through transforming
gender roles, improving women’s position and challenging power imbalances
between men and women are key to building resilience.
 Despite this knowledge, the challenge to turn this understanding into concrete
actions in the agriculture sector continues.
2. What is the importance of integrating gender and development and disaster
risk reduction management?
Based on the framework, the report looks at the role of gender in disaster impacts
more broadly from health and education to employment and assets to gender-based
violence and child marriage. The report goes a step further than previous studies
looking at gender and disasters by covering the role of gender in resilience including
disaster preparedness and coping capacity.

 Disaster impacts depend on hazard type and intensity, exposure who and

what is at risk of being affected, levels of vulnerability susceptibility to
damage, preparedness and coping capacity.
 Gender inequality purple circle arises from the expected roles of men and
women in a society, which influence socioeconomic status, level of
agency, and the way men and women prepare for, react to, are impacted
by, and recover from, disasters.
 In the overlay maroon area between gender inequality and disaster
impacts are the factors that drive disaster impacts and are influenced by
gender dynamics. This is where gender differentiated impacts
 happen. Gender-differentiated impacts of disasters can exacerbate gender
inequality, which in turn can worsen resilience to future disasters.

3. How does gender become one of the factors that affect vulnerability?
As these traits become smaller with deteriorating conditions, the
magnitude of any associated sex differences shrinks. In other words, the
magnitude of evolved sex differences can fluctuate from one context to another
and can change across historical time within the same context. Although much
remains to be learned, many human sex differences follow this pattern

Height provides a good example of condition dependence because it is

easily measured and likely reflects an evolutionary history of male-male physical
competition and women’s preference for men who are taller than average. If
height is a condition-dependent, sexually selected trait that is analogous to the
peacock’s tail, then men should be taller than women throughout the world but, at
the same time, the magnitude of this sex difference should vary in predictable
ways across populations and across generations.

4. What is context of representation of gender and disaster?

Disaster impacts depend on hazard type and intensity, exposure who and what is at
risk of being affected, levels of vulnerability susceptibility to damage, preparedness and
coping capacity.

Gender inequality arises from the expected roles of men and women in a society, which
influence socioeconomic status, level of agency, and the way men and women prepare
for, react to, are impacted by, and recover from, disasters.

In the overlay between gender inequality and disaster impacts are the factors that drive
disaster impacts and are influenced by gender dynamics. This is where gender
differentiated impacts happen. Gender-differentiated impacts of disasters can
exacerbate gender inequality, which in turn can worsen resilience to future disasters.

That is why disaster risk management policies and interventions should operate in the

overlay area, using the tools available for mitigating disaster impacts and strengthening
resilience to close the gender gap in outcomes..
5. What is gender differentiated of disaster?
Gender and sex are not the same, but are commonly confused with one
another. Sex refers to the biological characteristics pertaining to males and
females. Gender, on the other hand, is the cultural and social construct that
assigns certain status, roles and responsibilities to males and females in a
society.
Disasters do not discriminate, but their impact does. Looking at disaster
mortality, women are often disproportionately affected and in some cases up to
nine times more likely to die. The gendered impact of disasters is context specific
and has a connection to the overall of a society. It is important to have sex and
age disaggregated data available in disaster, to know who is affected.

6. Why should we consider gender in emergencies?

• More women than men die in post-conflict situations from the indirect causes of
conflict, while more men than women die in direct armed conflicts.
• The World Health Organisation estimates of preventable maternal mortality
happens in countries affected by humanitarian crises.
• Humanitarian crises offer a ‘window of opportunity’ to transform unequal
gender relations and shift harmful gender norms but current models of
humanitarian response are not designed to take advantage of this.
• Existing forms of gender-based like domestic and sexual violence and early
marriage, increase during a crisis, and new forms such as sexual exploitation
and abuse, and sex trafficking, may emerge. Women and girls are at most risk of
GBV
7. What is gender sensitive approach in disaster nursing?
The term “gender” refers to the socially-constructed roles, behaviors,
activities and attributes that a society considers appropriate for a person based
on his or her assigned sex at birth. Understanding the gender implications and
facets of natural disasters and climate change is critical to effective disaster risk
management practices that enable communities and countries to be disaster
resilient. All women, men, girls and boys do not face the same needs and
vulnerabilities in the face of natural disasters and climate change; there are
differences within each group and between individuals regarding specific
protection concerns and capacities people with mental or physical disabilities,
minorities and indigenous populations, the elderly, chronically ill, unaccompanied
children, child headed household, female-headed households, widows and over
time throughout the disaster and post-disaster phases. Various factors, including
social, economic, ethnic, cultural and physiological factors, affect not only the
ways that disasters impact women, men, girls and boys, but also their coping
 strategies and their participation in prevention, relief, recovery and reconstruction
processes

8. What is gender mainstreaming in disaster preparedness and risk

assessment?
Gender mainstreaming is considered a vital element in disaster reduction
policy making to integrated a gender equality perspective in all policies at all level
and disaster reduction refers to promoting awareness about gender equality, to
help reduce the impact of disasters and to incorporate gender analysis in disaster
management, risk reduction and sustainable development to decrease
vulnerability. Since women are more vulnerable in a disaster, their needs and
concerns should be widely integrated into risk reduction plans and procedures
from both perspectives of women as beneficiaries and decision makers.

MENDOZA, ALLYSA MAE E.

BSN4-1