I found this article, about how natural disasters, and therefore climate change, have significantly greater negative effects on women fascinating. (The article is from March–I have a backlog of stuff I bookmarked to blog about. Most of it does not necessarily seem interesting enough to resurrect several months later, but this piece did to me.)
The statistics are startling. According to the article,
natural disasters on average kill more women than men — 90 percent female fatalities in some cases, prevent girls from going to school, increase the threat of sexual assault.
The article lists numerous reasons for this upsetting disparity: men are more likely to own cell phones, so women are less likely to receive early alerts; girls rather than boys are in charge of fetching fresh water, often at the expense of their schooling and/or safety; women are less likely to be able to swim or climb trees. And natural disasters increase the rate at which girls are married off as well. The article also suggests ways of helping women and girls, some so staggeringly obvious that I’m gobsmacked that they had to be developed rather than be default: asking women and girls what they need/want, for instance, and providing gender-segregated restrooms in shelters so women feel safe going there.
The article made me wonder if the same dynamic was present in, say, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in the US.
Surprise, it was. According to this piece, the recovery period showed that rates of violence against women quadrupled in the wake of the hurricane, and due to women’s mobility being limited by childbirth, responsibility for children and elderly relatives, and by making up a higher proportion of the elderly themselves, women are significantly more vulnerable during disaster in the US as well. I also found reviews of this book, told by the women who survived the hurricane themselves and highlighting gendered components of their experiences.
So, it seems that in multiple locations around the world, natural disasters, far from making us all equal, exacerbate existing inequalities. I wish I could be surprise.