Saving and protecting lives by empowering women

Deborah Clifton and Fiona Gell

Women and men face different risks and vulnerabilities during disaster, and they bring different resources to preparing for and coping with disaster. Less well recognised are the ways in which humanitarian interventions themselves influence the nature of gender relations during crises. A gender-blind humanitarian response which does not address gender-specific issues and does not pay particular attention to the situation of women can worsen both the immediate survival prospects for women and their families, and women's long-term position in society. This article contends that the process of providing humanitarian aid and the institutions that deliver it tend to be inherently male-biased and thus discriminatory against women, and that a commitment is needed both to understanding how institutional bias works against women, and to challenging the status quo.

Humanitarian agencies and their multi-million pound interventions have enormous power to challenge gender discrimination, perpetuate it, or even exacerbate it. The use of gender analysis to determine a gender-fair response is a critical factor in determining the outcome. A review of the literature on gender in humanitarian response reveals very little use of comprehensive gender analysis. The information available is anecdotal rather than analytical, and the inability to identify specific impact in terms of gender relations is a result of the fact that few programmes set out to challenge gender inequity. It is no wonder that achieving gender-equitable outcomes remains one of the great unmet challenges of humanitarian work.

How humanitarian interventions shape gender relations

Until quite recently, disaster-affected women have been viewed and portrayed primarily as passive and needy victims, a 'vulnerable group'. This limited view has almost always resulted in humanitarian responses focusing solely on meeting women's immediate practical needs. Good practice on gender in emergencies has come to mean paying attention to the role of women in food distribution, providing sanitary towels, and ensuring adequate lighting and health services for women. These are important steps, but they remain rooted in an approach that is oblivious to social relations and power dynamics. It is true that gender inequality is a root cause of vulnerability, creating or contributing to particular risks for women. However, focusing on women's vulnerability – to the neglect of their capacities and resources, and their longer-term interests – misrepresents the actual experiences of women and men and negatively affects the culture and practice of emergency management (Enarson 1998).

Gender analysis recognises women's work and decision-making influence as central to preparing for, responding to, recovering from, and mitigating community disasters. By building on this analysis, gender-fair humanitarian aid puts women's immediate and longer term interests at the heart of the assessment and planning process, thus ensuring that their chances of survival are increased, their coping strategies strengthened, and their status in the community raised with consequent improvements for the well-being of the whole community. It requires inclusive, participatory, democratic models of response that involve women not only as victims but also as resourceful community actors. In practice, however, women's representation is still often lacking in disaster response teams, emergency programme management, and the formal and informal participation needed to rebuild communities.

Gender-fair emergency management also seeks to challenge the longer-term structural barriers to women's vulnerability to disasters. Since disaster mitigation seeks to address the underlying causes of vulnerability, in addition to physical measures such as raising land or building dikes it must also address longer-term strategic factors such as unequal land ownership, wealth distribution, and gender inequality. Communities are safer and more resilient to crisis when they are more egalitarian, and when all social groups are empowered in a way that enables them to contribute their respective opinions and resources.

When external agencies provide resources without considering gender issues they can seriously jeopardise the position of women. With already fewer opportunities for education, employment, and leadership than men, women are likely to be further disadvantaged by interventions that reinforce traditional roles and relationships. If too many resources are targeted to women without adequate analysis of the risks involved and without adequate participation of women, their security and position may be further jeopardised by backlash from men. Women must be fully involved in determining the pace of change, as they are the best judges of resistance and how to overcome it.

If gender equity goals are considered at all, they are typically equated with post-emergency rehabilitation or development work, where it is more straightforward to address gender inequities than in relief work. However, the role of relief in laying the foundations for rebuilding the social, economic, and physical infrastructure of communities is now well recognised. The long-term course of a humanitarian response can be set by programme decisions made within the first few days of relief work. Hence, getting the relief response right for women as well as men from day one is of paramount importance.

Why gender equity and women's empowerment are vital to saving and protecting lives

The aims of humanitarian intervention

Gender analysis in any programme needs to take as its starting point the following questions. Are the overall goals sensitive to the interests of both women and men? If so, how can these aspirations to achieve gender equity be made explicit and developed into actionable plans?

The aim of humanitarian response is to save and protect lives quickly and effectively in the event of an emergency, in order to ensure that fewer people die, fall sick, or suffer deprivation. Underlying these aims are two fundamental principles recognised by the humanitarian community: that those affected by disaster have a...