By Damyanty Sridharan

Women were discriminated against in the disaster and its aftermath

The tsunami discriminated against women -- anecdotal evidence shows that many more women and children died in the tsunami than men. So did those who responded to the disaster. Governments, humanitarian agencies and local communities engaged in relief and rehabilitation largely ignored women and their concerns.

In Indonesia, in four villages in the Aceh Besar district surveyed by Oxfam, surviving males outnumbered female survivors by almost 3 to 1. In four villages in north Aceh district, 284 out of 366 deaths were of females. In the worst affected village of Kuala Cangkoy, for every male who died four females died. In Cuddalore district in India, three times as many women died as men -- 391 compared to 146 men. In Sri Lanka too, camp surveys and press reports suggest a similar imbalance.

In many instances women died because they were never taught how to swim -– often a cultural taboo. Or because they wore saris that restricted their movement. Or because they were not willing let go of their children when the waves struck. In a sense, it was social factors such as an expected role as modest homemakers and mothers that led to the loss of many lives.

The discrimination continued in the relief phase as well. Local panchayats (village councils) played a crucial role in relief collection and distribution. In India, in each kuppam (fishing hamlet), the panchayat acts as a guild and a local governing body represented exclusively by men -– particularly men who own boats. The initial government relief money (Rs 2,000-4,000) went directly to these panchayats and, in turn, to male heads of families. There have been widespread complaints of men spending it on their priorities, including alcohol, denying the family essential resources and even topping up the irresponsibility with domestic violence.

In many instances, single women without adult sons did not receive any relief material or money even when many of them were the sole breadwinners. Even women who could go fishing were denied rehabilitation grants, as they do not normally pay fishing tax to the panchayat. Similarly, livelihood restoration measures ignored women as they did not own assets, particularly boats and nets, in their name. Some NGOs are now trying to rectify this error by providing boats and nets under the joint ownership of husband and wife, or in the name of women’s self-help groups.

Adolescent girls were also adversely affected during the relief operations. They faced lack of security in camps; physical violence and rape were also reported. Further, basic necessities like sanitary napkins and innerwear were usually not part of the relief supplies, and lack of monetary relief meant they could not procure what they needed on their own. According to researchers, widowers are marrying adolescent girls, but widow remarriage is a rare practice.

In the rehabilitation phase, temporary shelters were built without taking into consideration the needs of women and girls. Needs such as privacy, access to sanitation and facilities to cook. In Kanyakumari and Tirunelveli, women spent time with their infants outside, day and night, to escape the summer heat in their windowless, humid, light-roof ‘boxes’. Shelters around Chennai and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands had toilets located far away from the living quarters, making it difficult and unsafe for women to access at night. Sanitation facilities deteriorated even in the improved interim shelters after the rains, and women had to resort to open defecation even in the city suburbs.

A lot of attention has been paid to making boats available to men. Women who repaired nets or were petty vendors were equally if not more deeply affected. But they received no compensation. Women who fish and collect shrimp and shells from estuaries were often left out of the rehabilitation process, as the emphasis was on providing more and more boats.

If one looks closely at the impact of disasters -– earthquakes, tsunamis, floods or drought -– there is evident discrimination against women. Such issues do come up in a post-disaster situation. But, unfortunately, they fail to get addressed effectively. This is mainly because development per se is not engendered. The absence of sufficient analysis of communities from a gender perspective is bound to result in actions like sourcing relief through fishermen panchayats. If, under normal circumstances, efforts towards human progress are not undertaken with a gender perspective, they will not spring up overnight, following a disaster. To quote Mahbub ul Haq who changed the debate on gender relations, especially in the context of South Asia: “Human development if not engendered is fatally endangered.”

The world over, the status of women compares poorly to that of men. In developing countries the gap is wider. In South Asia, old-world patriarchal values continue to co-exist alongside modern, global views and practices. Every country in the region continues to have pockets dominated by feudal and tribal value systems and suffocating patriarchal traditions. These values permeate and influence behaviour despite structural changes witnessed in society. Communities are often so entrenched in culture that customary and traditional norms and practices at times override the law. During disasters, the same behaviour makes women more vulnerable not only to the impact but also in the whole relief and rehabilitation process.

There is as yet no index to measure the differentiated impact of disasters on men and women. However, given the situation, it is no surprise to find that women fare much worse than men in various calamities. There are efforts to address the special needs of women, as noted in the new edition of the Sphere Handbook and World Health Organisation guidelines, but such concerns and norms hardly ever get translated effectively in the field. What is surprising is that despite well-documented differentiated impacts recorded over the past decades, the response to disasters is still largely gender-blind.

(The author is grateful to the Centre for Women’s Development and Research, Chennai, for having facilitated discussions with affected communities)

(The author is a senior advisor with the Fredreich Ebert Stifung Foundation)

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