Women’s capabilities in disaster recovery and resilience must be acknowledged, utilized and supported

ABSTRACT

People’s susceptibility and capacity to respond to disasters is not homogenous. Women, in a generalized sense, tend to bear the brunt of disasters, but they are also often at the frontlines of disaster response and recovery. Women’s experiences and capabilities, however, remain ill-recognized or poorly integrated into policies and projects. This paper draws on a study that documents and listens to the stories of women market vendors in Vanuatu who experienced Cyclone Pam and the severe drought that followed. From this, we issue a call to those working in the disaster and development fields to: (1) acknowledge and utilize women’s knowledge and skills in disaster response and recovery, and (2) support women to further develop their capabilities and address underlying vulnerabilities. While we put forward that women should be more central in disaster recovery and resilience-building processes, we issue a warning that wider inequitable power structures must also be proactively tackled in order to improve women’s overall wellbeing and relieve their burdens.

KEYWORDS:

• Disasters
• marketplaces
• resilience
• Vanuatu
• women

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the market vendors for their openness to share their stories, and we are very grateful for the time they gave to us in doing so. We also wish to thank UN Women for supporting and helping to facilitate this study. This work was supported by ARC Linkage project (grant number LP160100941).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. For this paper, we draw on the definition of livelihood resilience put forward by Tanner et al. (2015, p. 23) as ‘the capacity of all people across generations to sustain and improve their livelihood opportunities and well-being despite environmental, economic, social and political disturbances’.

2. We refer to marketplaces as the geographical spaces where local trading activities occur. Included in this space are also a set of localized institutions, organizations, actors, products and transactions, and cultural meanings (Busse & Sharp, 2019).

3. Cyclone Pam displaced around 65,000 people, decimated 96% of food stocks and affected the water supply of 110,000 people (Oxfam, 2016), and the adequacy of response and recovery efforts by the government and external agencies have been questioned(McDonnell, 2019). As the country attempted to recover, the worst drought in 20 years then followed as a result of El Niño, further exacerbating impacts (Oxfam, 2016).

4. The M4C is a multi-country initiative that aims to promote the economic empowerment of women through achieving non-discriminatory, inclusive and safe marketplaces (UN Women, 2015).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council Linkage project [LP160100941].

Notes on contributors

Karen E. McNamara

Karen E. McNamara is a human geographer interested in how people are impacted by environmental stressors and how they can respond in ways that are effective, equitable and sustainable. Karen is an ARC Future Fellow (2020–2024) and Associate Professor in the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at The University of Queensland. Karen has been undertaking policy-relevant and applied research in climate change adaptation, social vulnerability, gender, local knowledge and environmental mobility for over fifteen years, partnering with governments, and inter-governmental and non-governmental organizations throughout the Asia-Pacific region. She has published more than 85 academic papers and book chapters.

Rachel Clissold

Rachel Clissold is a Research Assistant in the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at The University of Queensland. She has a Bachelor of Environmental Management (Honours Class I) and a Diploma in Global Issues, both from The University of Queensland. Rachel is interested in exploring how communities are impacted by, and responding to, a changing climate, with a particular interest in Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands.

Ross Westoby

Ross Westoby is a Research Fellow with Griffith Institute for Tourism (GIFT) at Griffith University specializing in the intersection between tourism, livelihoods and climate change. Ross is a social scientist whose research focus is grounded in placing ‘community’ at the centre of climate change adaptation and sustainable tourism destinations. Central to his work is understanding the complex cultural, social, political and economic forces at play in the adaptation and tourism spaces. Ross previously played a central role in evaluating fourteen climate change adaptation projects in Vanuatu, has conducted numerous consultancies throughout the Pacific Islands and Torres Strait region, and has worked in research and evaluation for a social justice NGO in Brisbane.