Gender, climate change and natural disasters
Kellie Tranter
The recent spate of "natural" disasters (some of which are "climate
related", some are not) all over the world caused me to wonder whether
their effects are evenly spread between the sexes.
Logically, human beings of both sexes should react in much the same
way to environmental threats, and any differences in the effect of
disasters between the sexes should be fairly small.
I was appalled at what it showed: more women die than men as the
direct and indirect result of natural disasters. Ninety per cent of the
140,000 victims of the 1991 Bangladesh cyclone disasters were women;
more women than men died during the 2003 European heat wave; and the
2006 tsunami killed three to four women for each man.
How could that be so?
In a speech in 1999 Lord Hoffman, an English law lord, said "...
unless you know the question, you will not be able to get the right
answer. Once the question has been identified, the answer is usually
relatively easy ...".
That prompted me to think that in order to find out why women are
more affected by climate change than men, by first asking "in what ways
are women more affected?" we might get some clues as to why women are
affected in that way.
In Sri Lanka, swimming and tree climbing are taught mainly to boys;
this helped males cope better than females, and allowed more to survive
when the waves of the tsunami hit.
Social prejudice keeps girls and women from learning to swim, which
severely reduces their chances of survival in flooding disasters. Women
often stay indoors because of social prohibitions against leaving home.
In Aceh many women were found dead with babies still clutched in
their arms. Some personal accounts by survivors tell of mothers pushing
their children to safety on to buildings or up trees that withstood the
tsunami, but were then swept away themselves.
The long dresses women are obliged to wear under Aceh's shariah laws
made it harder to move quickly. They could not run as fast as men, nor
could they swim.
There were stories of some women who were in their homes but casually
dressed when the first wave struck, who ran to put on "acceptable"
outdoor clothes before seeking safety, and as a result were drowned or
barely escaped.
In times of disaster and environmental stress women become less
mobile because they are the primary care-givers.
After a natural disaster, women are more likely to become victims of
domestic and sexual violence. They often avoid using shelters out of
fear. The household workload increases substantially after a disaster,
which forces many girls to drop out of school to help with chores.
Nutritional status is a critical determinant of the ability to cope
with the effect of natural disasters. Women are more prone to
nutritional deficiencies because of their unique nutritional needs.
Some cultures have household food hierarchies, generally favouring
males. In Sub-Saharan Africa, women carry greater loads than men, but
have a lower intake of calories because the cultural norm is for men to
receive more food.
Women plant, produce, procure and prepare most of the world's food:
women are responsible for about 75 per cent of household food production
in Sub-Saharan Africa; 65 per cent in Asia; and 45 per cent in Latin
America.
The time-consuming task of gathering and transporting water generally
falls to women. As water becomes scarce, women's workload increases
dramatically.
From the information I was able to access it seemed to me that the
ways in which women are affected more than men is fairly consistently
associated with their caregiving obligations or with cultural or
religious mores.
There is probably no real scope for direct action because most of the
foundational problems are entrenched cultural or religious mores that
are not really susceptible to even local political intervention.
Can aid agencies do what governments can't? Perhaps it all comes down
to educating women - giving them the benefit of the capacity for
critical thought that comes with general education, and also educating
women to look objectively at, and perhaps think differently about, their
roles and behaviours and the consequences of these when under threat.
That might at least bring them closer to a position of choice.
But each possible solution brings more problems and more questions.
Where does the money come from? Should it come from developed nations
considering that some of these disasters have been exacerbated or caused
by their development? How should fair contributions be determined?
In December 2007 four global institutions - Women's Environment and
Development Organisation (WEDO), United Nations Development Program
(UNDP), World Conservation Union (IUCN), and the United Nations
Environment Program (UNEP) - met with Women environment ministers and
leaders at the UN Climate Change Conference in Bali to ensure for the
first time that "gender issues are prominent in climate policy and
action".
As a result of the meeting, the Network called upon the signatory
countries and the Secretariat of the UN Framework Convention on Climate
Change to: - recognise that women are powerful agents of change and that
their full participation is critical in adaptation and mitigation
climate policies and initiatives, and hence, guarantee that women and
gender experts participate in all decisions related to climate change; -
take action in order to ensure UNFCCC compliance with human rights
frameworks, international and national commitments on gender equality
and equity, including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination against Women (CEDAW); - develop a gender strategy,
invest in gender-specific climate change research and establish a system
for the use of gender-sensitive indicators and criteria for governments
to use in national reporting to the UNFCCC Secretariat; - analyse and
identify gender-specific impacts and protection measures related to
floods, droughts, heatwaves, diseases, and other environmental changes
and disasters; and - given that millions of poor women affected by
climate change live and work outside the reach of formal markets, design
and implement funding mechanisms accessible to them to reduce their
particular vulnerabilities.
In addition, increase equitable access by poor women and men to
climate change market-based approaches such as the Clean Development
Mechanism.
The actions of these groups is a positive and essential step: unless
the interaction between gender and climate change is placed and kept
firmly on the agenda, any policies to slow and redress climate change
and its consequences are unlikely to assist disadvantaged women.
Their proposals also allow action to be put in train now, through
established international organisations which have the capacity to
allocate the necessary funding. And if we all encourage our governments
to support their initiatives through the United Nations - to which all
wealthier countries are financial contributors - then we are all making
a contribution to the solution.
Addressing the issue of gender and climate change requires long-term
objectives and long-term commitment from the international community.
The women's organisations who are currently involved simply can't
shoulder the financial burden, and nor should they.
And with the frequency and severity of environmental disasters
increasing it is also critical that the work of those organisations
should not be hindered by the qualification "pending funding". |