The economic empowerment of women is vital to reducing the risk and impact of future disasters in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Women and girls worldwide are more exposed to disaster risk, suffering higher rates of mortality, morbidity and economic damage to their livelihoods. In countries where men and women have equal rights, disasters have similar impacts on women and men. Where women make up a larger proportion of those living in poverty, they are more vulnerable to disaster impacts. It is important to recognize that although women live in vulnerable conditions, they do not constitute a “vulnerable group”.
The poor – most of whom are women – tend to live in circumstances that make them less likely to survive and recover from a disaster event. Fatality rates are higher for women than men due to gendered differences in capacity and resources to cope with such events, and insufficient access to information and early warnings.
1 The gendered asymmetry in vulnerability to disaster risk is rooted in economic, social, and political imbalances between women and men.
2 Women’s greater risk stems primarily from their more tenuous social position prior to disasters, as well as their additional reproductive work and care burdens.
The recent devastating floods in Bosnia-Herzegovina demonstrated again that the greatest impact of disasters on livelihoods tends to be in agriculture and the informal economy where women make up a large part of the workforce. Since women are marginalized in agriculture due to factors of land ownership and access to resources they also face the greatest obstacles in recovery, often unable to claim ownership, insurance or right to other benefits. Women make up the largest part of unpaid family labour, and a significant proportion of informal and small enterprises. Also over-represented in low paying jobs with little security, women are a majority of the unemployed post-disaster, 3 and remain unemployed longer. The post-disaster period forces women to work even harder in unpaid and caring roles, further reducing their income-earning time and potential. This is especially the case when schools and childcare facilities are closed.
It has been shown that substantial productivity and development losses take place postdisaster when women are excluded from public roles in relief, recovery and reconstruction. It has also been demonstrated that equitable attention to women’s disaster recovery shortens the time for economic reintegration, improves efficiency of reconstruction while addressing social issues.
4 Women themselves have found that by organizing and participating in decision making post recovery, they were empowered and improved the impacts of post-disaster investments.
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Experiences of the World Bank Millenium Development Fund and Joint Reconstruction fund showed that post-disaster economic regeneration was accelerated by women’s participation
1 Neumayer, E. and T. Plumper, ‘The Gendered Nature Of Natural Disasters: The Impact Of Catastrophic
Events On The Gender Gap In Life Expectancy, 1981-2002’,
2 Aguilar, L. et al, ‘Training manual on gender and climate change’ IUCN, UNDP & GCCA, Costa Rica
2009
3 UNESCAP & ISDR, Protecting Development Gains: Reducing Disaster Vulnerability And Building
Resilience In Asia And The Pacific, Bangkok, 2010
4 World Bank Institute distance learning: natural disaster risk management program
5 UNESCAP & ISDR
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in livelihoods recovery. It also demonstrated that women’s active involvement in reconstruction, livelihoods recovery and DRR increased their resilience so that they were better able to maintain their livelihoods and cope with losses in subsequent disasters.
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Investing in women’s livelihoods helps speed up overall recovery and increase resilience in the face of future disasters. Women spend a higher percentage of their income on feeding and education their children, contributing to overall development as well as the increased resilience of future generations. Women must be allowed to reach their potential to contribute to food security, poverty eradication and development, including by addressing women’s livelihoods in the immediate response phase.
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Women’s economic empowerment initiatives can also reach beyond targeted women themselves, to strengthen gender equality in related service providers, for example working with contractors to ensure compliance with gender equality provisions, gender balance in the workforce, pay equity and affirmative action.
Women’s economic empowerment is a vital aspect of post-disaster livelihoods recovery, and the post-disaster recovery period presents an opportunity to increase awareness of its role in reducing disaster vulnerability. Economic empowerment of women is central to reducing disaster risk, reducing poverty and the feminization of poverty, as well as to achieving sustainable development and positive impacts on individual lives.
The Hyogo Framework for Action was adopted by 168 governments in 2005 as the key global instrument for reducing disaster risks, creating a more favourable and enabling environment for reducing risk and building resilience.
Under the HFA, there has been consistent progress in strengthening disaster preparedness and response, risk identification and early warning, and governance and institutional frameworks. 121 countries have enacted legislation to establish policy and legal frameworks for disaster risk reduction.
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Countries have been less successful however, in achieving risk-sensitive investment and addressing the underlying drivers of risk 9 , where social and economic inequalities are deeply significant. There is a major gap between policy development and its implementation, which has so far failed to reverse either the growing trend towards greater disaster risk and economic loss, or to significantly impact the economic inequality of women. Significantly, the
Hyogo Framework did not systematically address or mainstream attention to gender equality.
Work is underway now toward the Third United Nations World conference on Disaster Risk
Reduction in March 2015 which will result in the post-2015 framework for disaster risk reduction (HFA2).
While the focus of HFA was on ‘reducing vulnerability’ to disasters, HFA2 is creating great demand for addressing Priority for Action 4, ‘underlying risk factors’ in the continuum towards resilience and sustainability. Women’s economic disenfranchisement is among the most significant factors underlying disaster risk. Resilience as the goal of disaster risk reduction is
6 World Bank. 2012. More Than Mainstreaming : Promoting Gender Equality And Empowering Women
Through Post-Disaster Reconstruction. MDF-JRF working paper series ; no. 4. Washington DC ; World
Bank Group
7 Ms Anne Christensen, IFRC delegation to the UN, at the 56 th session of the CSW, New York.
8 UNISDR Report on the Hyogo Framework for Action, 2013
9 Ibid, in Chowdhury and Mahoux, Towards Risk-Resilient Development: Taking Into Consideration
Demographic Trends And Natural Constraints, Background paper for 129 th Assembly Of The Inter-
Parliamentary Union And Related Meetings, Geneva 7-9 October 2013
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becoming a guiding concept for the post-2015 development agenda; its increasing urgency demands a greater focus on women’s empowerment and social equity.
The way forward mapped out for HFA2 identifies strengthening policies, legislation and frameworks in support of women’s social and economic empowerment as a primary consideration for realizing gender equality outcomes in DRR.
10 It highlights the need to focus on the structural causes and limitations affecting women experience such as access to productive resources in order to address underlying causes of unequal vulnerability.
Other international agreements on the environment, climate change and reducing disaster risk also iterate the need for women’s economic empowerment, recognizing that sustainable development requires action on gender equality in social, economic and environmental matters.
The United Nations Conference on sustainable Development (‘Rio+20’) reaffirmed the importance of the commitments undertaken in the Beijing Platform for Action, in putting forward a development model that includes social equity and women’s empowerment. It reiterated the commitment to ensuring women’s equal rights and opportunities, including women’s empowerment, and dropping discriminatory barriers against them in agriculture, employment, and disaster risk reduction among other areas:
“We recognize that gender equality and women’s empowerment are important for sustainable development and our common future.” 11
Disaster risk-resilient development is not only about protecting people’s lives and livelihoods but also about building social, economic and environmental sustainability, aiming to reduce socio-economic vulnerabilities to natural hazards. A key strategy for this is the systematic integration of gender-responsive disaster risk reduction into overall development planning, policy and programs. Disaster risk-resilient development addresses social equity by reducing the social and economic vulnerabilities of women and men to disasters. Good practice also demonstrates that applying DRR to social development contributes to the promotion of gender equality.
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Strong recommendations have repeatedly been made for women’s participation and leadership in reconstruction and relief work, most recently in the Post-Disaster Needs
Assessment Gender Report for Bosnia-Herzegovina. In order for recovery to be made gender sensitive, women need to be part of the process, as they know their needs and priorities.
Women must be included in long term economic recovery efforts to maximize post- disaster opportunities to challenge the gender status quo. When women are included in recovery decision making and leadership, economic opportunities for women are much more likely. By recognizing and promoting the unique capacities of women, one can simultaneously further community resilience and advance gender equality.
A risk- and gender-sensitive development model must be seen as a prerequisite for recovery and ongoing development planning, to avoid the generation of new risks that will continue to disproportionately affect women, and to focus instead on increasing resilience through the full inclusion, social and economic empowerment of women.
10 UNISDR, Towards the Post-2015 Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (HFA2): Women as a force in resilience building, gender equality in disaster risk reduction, April 2012. A background paper on gender inclusion in HFA2P11, at http://www.preventionweb.net/documents/posthfa/background_paper_gender_inclusion_in_hfa2.pdf
11 The Future We Want - the Outcome document, Rio+20 Sustainable Developmt Conference, June 2012
12 UNIDSR, Gender Perspectives: Working together for Disaster Risk Reduction (2007), documents good practice in 11 countries showing how women can be empowered by playing an active role in DRR
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This proposal addresses the urgent and inseparable need to address the economic empowerment of women as an essential element of disaster-risk resilient development.
Failure to incorporate women’s empowerment objectives into the floods recovery and reconstruction process, and conversely, failure to address disaster risk reduction within women’s empowerment objectives, will be a missed opportunity. It increases the likelihood that the status quo of gender relations will not only be maintained but even more deeply entrenched, given the greater disaster impacts on women that have increased their disadvantage and marginalization.
In BiH, the PDNA process made it clear that at the municipal level, women and their organizations face challenges to be included as equal partners in relief and reconstruction discussions. Assistance intended for an entire population is unlikely to provide equal access and benefit to women and men when it relies on male-dominated distribution systems. There is a real risk that the bulk of cash opportunities, small business recovery support and cash-forwork employment generated in the aftermath of the floods will be directed to men, in spite of the fact that women’s need for economic resources – especially in the case of female-led households -- is critical.
A key lesson repeated through many disasters has been that gender equality must be a fully integrated objective of reconstruction strategies, with a specific goal of women’s economic empowerment for better quality outcomes.
Disasters create legitimate reasons to do things differently, introducing new programs, policies and progress towards women’s empowerment and gender equality. Post-disaster recovery is an opportune time to support women’s economic empowerment, to transform gender and other social and political relations to both improve the quality of life and reduce disaster vulnerability in poor communities.
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