There is also existing research which has indicated that the everyday social construction and reproduction of gender roles and relations and the associated inequalities in power affect the vulnerability of women and girls in disasters in the developing world. It is recognised that the definition of women and girls is contested; women may be identified as young women, women or the elderly, while girls may be considered as the girl child, adolescents or young women (Bradshaw & Fordham, 2013).
Wisner et al. (2004) defined vulnerability as the capacity of an individual or group to anticipate, cope with, resist, and recover from the impact of a natural or human made hazard. This vulnerability is caused by lack of access to resources such as income, education, health and social networks which allow people to cope with the hazardous events. This access to resources may be gendered, where women may have less access to and control over resources than men because of unequal gender relations. This has been emphasised by Fordham (2001) who discussed that gender bias plays a major role in influencing resource allocation; “attitudinal barriers are deeply rooted in patriarchy-based socialization, where men are considered superior to women – a systematic disempowerment that has left women with little presence in decision-making bodies, resulting in the exclusion of their issues and concerns from the policy agenda” (Fordham, 2001:8).
Thus as Blaikie et al. (1994) argue: “Gender is a pervasive division affecting all societies, and it channels access to social and economic resources away from women and towards men...since our argument is less access to resources leads to increased vulnerability, we contend that in general women are more vulnerable to hazards” (Blaikie et al. 1994:48).
Vulnerability may also be related to the roles of men and women in society and how they should behave. Women may be seen as having several roles in the home, from reproductive roles relating to child bearing and domestic work to productive roles, involving paid work and also community management involving unpaid roles in the community (Bradshaw, 2013). The reproductive and community management roles are not valued because they do not generate an income, and this means that women are poorer and have less of a voice in the home than men. Within these households, women are more dependent on men for access to economic resources and thus they have greater economic vulnerability.
Therefore, “being a woman does not lead to vulnerability; what leads to vulnerability are the unequal gendered power relations which limit women’s access to and control over resources” (Bradshaw & Fordham, 2013:9). Not all women are vulnerable all the time; it is when gender inequalities are high that women are more likely to be more vulnerable to the negative effects of hazards than men.
Furthermore, the impact of disasters may also be gendered due to the enforcement of social constraints, which decreases the ability of women to save themselves. These constraints are based on gender and are related to the socially constructed roles of men and women and the social norms that govern what they are or are not allowed to do; “response to an event is subjective and will be framed by individual understandings of appropriate behaviour, which in turn are shaped by cultural norms, including gender norms (Bradshaw, 2013:8). The social constraints may include women having to be accompanied by a male family member when they leave their home, or facing restrictions on movement due to long hair or clothing. The social constraints may also influence the extent to which women are allowed to develop physical strength such as being taught to swim or climb trees which may be essential life saving activities in a disaster (Seager, 2006).
These social constraints were evident in the case of flooding in Bangladesh in 1991, where parents decided to leave girls at home rather than take them to cyclone shelters due to the fear that they would be exposed to harm from shared sleeping and sanitary facilities, which was a rarity in a culture of seclusion. Thus the fear of sexual abuse and harassment, and effectively being shamed and losing izzat was greater than the fear of flooding (Fordham, 2001, Plan, 2011). This may be related to the observation of the cultural norm of purdah where men are prevented from seeing women through segregation of the sexes.
Purdah may also mean that “women remain in their homes, despite cyclone warnings, waiting for a male authority figure to arrive and give them permission to leave or assist them in doing so” (Bradshaw, 2013:9). In Bangladesh, a highly sex segregated society, warning information was transmitted by males to males (a gendered warning system influenced by the masculine gendered domain of disaster management) on the assumption that this information would be communicated to the rest of the family. This did not occur and additionally, it was found that women had “comparatively less knowledge about cyclones and were dependent on male decision-making” (Fordham, 2001:21). Even if they did receive warnings, women were constrained by cultural norms that restricted their freedom of movement in public, thus many women along with their children perished as they waited for their husbands to return home and take them to safety (Fordham, 2001). These social issues, as well as cyclone shelters being ill designed and insensitive to gender and culture specific needs negatively impacted on a positive response to warnings and resulted in greater suffering amongst women than men; among women aged 20-44, the death rate was 71 per 1000, compared to 15 per 1000 for men (Fordham, 2001).
In general, gender has to be understood as it intersects with characteristics such as age, sexuality, marital status and income. In this case, vulnerability of the girls was defined by the intersection of gender with age and sexuality (Bradshaw & Fordham, 2013:10). Intersectionality is an important concept in this research in terms of understanding risk and will be discussed further in Section 2.7.
The existing research therefore indicates that disaster is not seen to be gender neutral; “in the 1991 floods in Bangladesh, five times as many women as men died” (Seager, 2006:2) and the “less economic and cultural power women enjoy before an event, the greater their suffering in the aftermath” (Enarson & Morrow, 1998:5). There is also research which suggests that cases of gender based violence are frequent and unacceptably high in disasters, with occurrences of rape and sexual abuse of women and girls being reported in the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake in 2010 (Fordham, 2011). In many cases, men may also be more vulnerable due to socially constructed gender roles as providers and protectors, leading to men displaying more risk taking behaviour than women. This may be seen in Latino cultures, where the cult of machismo means men more than women are likely to suffer loss of life during an event “due to their socially constructed roles and associated riskier behaviour patterns in the face of danger” (Bradshaw, 2013:8).
The social construction and reproduction of these gender roles have been seen to play a role in disasters in the developed world. Existing research in the UK has been limited but has related flood fatalities in Europe and the UK to the role of risk taking by men (Jonkmen & Kelman, 2005). Enarson & Fordham (2001) also explored how the social relations of
ethnicity, social class and gender increased the vulnerability of women in communities prone to flooding in the UK and USA. They found that the “gendered division of labour in the home left women disproportionately responsible for children, seniors or disabled relatives” (Enarson & Fordham, 2001:47). Women who had flooded in Scotland were also responsible for accessing food, clothing, cleaning supplies and household equipment. The flooding revealed this previously unnoticed gendered division of labour because in comparison to women, men were seen to be less impacted in their daily lives by the flooding. After the Red River valley floods in the US, women were at greater risk of personal violence as they were drawn back into relationships with partners who could help them clean and repair their homes but this meant that the abuse continued. It was found that the existing power structures exposed some residents more than others to the effects of flooding, affected their capacity to recover and engage in community reconstruction (Enarson & Fordham, 2001, Enarson & Morrow, 2008).
Research in Australia also found that bush fires were not a gender neutral phenomenon but were an important means by which traditional gender roles and power relations were maintained and socially reproduced within rural landscapes (Eriksen et al. 2010). The gendered division of roles within bushfire brigades reflected the traditional division of labour in rural communities. Bushfire management was seen to be ‘men’s business’, whilst women were carers of men by providing food, drink and first aid. There was a lack of engagement amongst women in relation to bushfire prevention, preparation and response as this was perceived to be the responsibility of male family members. These gendered roles increased the vulnerability of men as they were responsible for managing the bushfires, but women were also vulnerable due to their reliance on men, which meant they did not have the knowledge to implement systems of defence such as water pumps and hoses.
Studies in the USA also looked at the impact of ethnicity and social factors in relation to excess male deaths in the 1995 Chicago heatwave (Klinenberg, 2002). Most recently there was a focus on the gendered impact of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans on African American women (Seager, 2006, David & Enarson, 2014). These studies discussed how the realities embedded in women’s daily lives set them up for difficulties long before the hurricane could strike. They highlighted that poverty in America was not only racialised but gendered (Ross, 2014). The poverty that leaves people more vulnerable to disasters amplifies gender. In New Orleans, 41% of female headed households fell below the poverty line (Seager, 2006). This meant they were less likely to receive information about the disaster, have a safe place to stay or have the means to leave; “poverty combines with race and ideologies about gender to produce a metric of deep disadvantage in terms of mobility” (Seager, 2006:3). Thus African American women were less likely to have a car than men
and were at a greater disadvantage. David & Enarson (2012) also discussed the impact of hurricane Katrina on the Afro- Caribbean, Chinese, Latina and Jewish communities, but there is limited literature on South Asian migrants in a post disaster context in the developed world.
It has been highlighted that patriarchal societies may be stronger in ethnic communities in the developing world and this has an impact on whether women have a voice in the home and can make decisions. The enforcement of social and gender roles is important because the daily power inequalities that individuals may face play a role in their vulnerability in a disaster; “disasters reveal community, regional and global power structures as well as power relations within intimate relationships” (Enarson & Morrow, 1998:5). They reflect the structure of the societies in which we live and the way systems in society function (Fordham & Meyreles, 2014) and therefore provide an opportunity to explore these relations and their possible consequences for disaster response and risk reduction.
Thus in the developing world, women may be restricted in the actions they can take due to social norms, such as leaving the home without male authority. This is related to issues surrounding honour and shame, which may be seen to change but not diminish in the migration context, leading to traditional gender roles being enforced in England. Studies have explored how these gender and social norms may play a role in increasing vulnerability to disasters in the developed world, but it is not known how these concepts may impact on South Asian migrant communities and their practical response to flooding in England. This research will address this gap in the literature.