Cross-cut Chapter 3 GLOBAL GENDER AND ENVIRONMENT OUTLOOK Food Chapter 1 Introduction Chapter 4: Water Energy


The Global Gender and Environment Outlook (GGEO) looks at linkages between gender and the environment in regard to a number of sectors, topics and issues. It is by now conventional wisdom that everything environmental is connected. However, some of the areas discussed in the GGEO – disasters, climate change, conflict and health – are particularly “cross-cutting”. This section briefly examines the complex inter-relations among these areas. At the same time, it should not be forgotten that gender and the environment itself is often seen as another cross-cutting issue.


Chapter 2 Disasters


For many years disasters have been defined by a “hazards” approach in which physical parameters are prioritized over socio-political variables to help understand causation, response, mitigation and recovery. Disasters have often been represented as large-scale, rare and extreme environmental events. However, hazards exist – and disasters take place – in the context of everyday realities defined by natural resource management, poverty, and social inequalities of many kinds (Blaikie et al. 2014; Hewitt 2014; O’Keefe et al. 1976).


argued convincingly through statistical analysis that the socially constructed, gender-specific vulnerabilities of females within everyday socio-economic patterns lead to higher female mortality rates in disasters. More females die in disasters (and at a younger age) than males, but this is tied closely to their socio-economic standing. Adverse impacts of disasters on females relative to males decrease as the socio-economic status of women rises (Neumayer and Plümper 2007). This is a powerful argument in favour of an intersectional gendered analysis rather than a simple biological sex- based investigation.


Specific disaster cases require an open approach. For example, during the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami in which, according to Oxfam (2005), male survivors in Indonesia outnumbered female survivors by almost three to one, in the worst case 80% of deaths were female. The Oxfam evidence is supported by Rofi et al. (2006), who found that two-thirds of tsunami deaths in Aceh Province, Indonesia, were female. A high percentage of female fatalities is common but not universal. For example, during the 1995 Chicago heat wave in the United States elderly African-American men were most likely to die (Klinenberg 2002); in other cases, especially in floods, young males appear to be particularly vulnerable through a greater propensity for risk-taking behavior (Jonkman and Kelman 2005).


Women may be disadvantaged in many other ways during environmental disasters. They are under- represented in both formal and informal decision- making roles pre- and post-disaster (Bradshaw 2013; Fordham 2003). Although women are more likely to believe warnings and have a greater propensity to act on them, gendered power relations mean men often make decisions (Tyler and Fairbrother 2013). Women experience higher rates of sexual and gender-based violence during disasters, a pattern found across social and class divides (Ajibade et al. 2013; Enarson 2012).


Bangkok flooding in 2011 Photo credit: © Ruchos/ shutterstock.com


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The gender-differentiated evidence base in this field is growing, demonstrating the always-gendered nature of disasters at any point in the disaster cycle and whatever the hazard types (Bradshaw 2013; Enarson 2012; Fordham 2003). Neumayer and Plümper (2007) have


There is a small but growing evidence base focused on the lived experiences of gender and sexual minority groups during environmental disasters. In the Asia- Pacific region, for example, there are many recognized cross-gender groups such as the whakawahine in New Zealand, the fa’afafine in Samoa, the mahu of Hawaii and the bakla of the Philippines, to name but a few (Gaillard et al. 2015; Gaillard 2011; Pincha 2008). Research has identified the specific vulnerability and marginalization, as well as the capacities and


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