The Gender Ramifications and Equity Issues of Disasters 

By Kiran Soni Gupta

Vol. 24 No.3,  Winter 2003-04

      India struggles with many developmental problems, including illiteracy, high population growth, and poor health. When a natural disaster strikes, women are especially vulnerable because of traditional social, economic, and cultural patterns that marginalize women and discriminate against them. Emergencies create chaos and confusion for all, but in times of disasters extra strains are imposed on women. It is important to study the impact of disasters on women.

Sriganganagar District, the granary of Rajasthan, is a very fertile area fed by three canal systems—Gang Canal, Bhakhra Canal, and Indira Gandhi Canal. I am the first woman District Collector and District Magistrate in the entire 55 years of India’s independence. I was expected to pull my weight as equal to many of my worthy [male] predecessors, but the challenges I faced were far greater than those that plagued the Magistrates that preceded me. I feel that women have to make an extra effort more often to make a mark and to gain the same respect that seems to come automatically to men. Free-flowing skepticism in official corners and from the public can make one feel that “when you come in you start with the negative balance against you and you have to prove otherwise.”

When I started my work in the district I thought it was going to be a breeze, but it was a lot harder than I expected. We dealt with many natural and man-made disasters—breaches in canals, a fire in an ammunition depot, drought, floods, earthquake, a war-like situation at the border, and the deterioration of public order situations following the murder of labor leader Darshan Koda and the death of a young boy while in police custody.

There are numerous memorable situations of a “few seconds that shake men and the world” that leave a trail of warnings that call for disaster preparedness in the future. In coping with emergencies, many issues are raised. The experience of managing the varied natural and man-made disasters in Sriganganagar District gave me insight into male and female responses to disaster management. The gender analysis of the study of disasters, and the strength and vulnerability of women in disaster response raise a range of issues facing women both as victims of disasters and as participants of disaster management.

Disasters work like a magnifying glass on society. They magnify what is good, but also what needs improvement. Disasters do not affect everyone equally. Who you are and what you do often determines your fate in such situations. A person’s problems before the disaster are still there after the disaster, only worse. When a disaster happens, both the strong and the weak points in a society really stand out. This is true for gender issues as much as with any other issue.

Most of us are familiar with the media images of mothers with children standing amidst the wreckage of floods, cyclones, earthquakes, and other major disasters. These pictures reinforce a common stereotypic image of women and disasters; that women are first and foremost victims. They are often the vulnerable poor, marginalized and lacking influence. But this is only half of the picture. Women also have an important positive role in communities. They are the ones who feed and care for the family and members of society at large. They contribute financially (whether formally or informally). They are also an important force in community volunteer groups that are often involved in disaster management.

Piperane village near Suratgarh, 85 km from Sriganganagar on the Sriganganagar-Bikaner National Highway, witnessed a fire in the army ammunition depot on May 25, 2001 that left the community in a state of horror and shock. Ammunition remains were scattered over an area of 20 sq km. Upon receipt of information from army officials, relief and rescue operations became the top priority. Detonations went off almost continuously. Instructions were issued to cut off electricity, rail services, other transport services, and to reduce the flow of water in canals. Finally, and most importantly, orders were issued to evacuate the seven villages in close proximity to the depot to prevent loss of human life.

We summoned the fire tenders from Abohar, Ferozepur, and Mukhtsar in Punjab, and from the adjacent districts of Hanumangarh and Bikaner to supplement the six tenders of our district. The response time was incredible. After giving the important instructions of the rescue operations, I accompanied the Superintendent of Police to the depot. The long trail of 26 fire tenders were lined up awaiting the signal from the army officials, who had cordoned off the area. Piperane soon became densely populated by army officials, civil administrators, the media, and onlookers. We set up a temporary office and our telephone connection seemed to be the only link with the outside world. The string of blasting sounds did not wane until the late hours of the evening. It was not until the next morning that the senior army officials escorted me into the depot. There were remnants of ammunition everywhere and the brunt of the heavy impact was borne by nearby buildings. An Electricity Department jeep lay singed, high-tension wires were writhing, and burnt cattle and houses are hard to describe in words.

While the fire burned, there was work for men of all ages, but there was no place for a woman near the fires. The younger boys were soon recruited for relief works while the women prepared the food in three Dharamshalas of Suratgarh, which were converted into temporary shelters for evacuees. The fire fighting was an all-male affair: the emergency police service, fire brigade, and bomb disposal squads consisted entirely of men. The work they did was very public and recognized. In their emergency response behavior, men adopted the “rescue the community” attitude while women were less involved. Women provided food while men managed the provision of relief supplies. These patterns existed because women have a relative lack of power and control in society.

Sriganganagar shares 210 km of international border with Pakistan. The long-brewing Indian-Pakistan tension has sharpened and there was a deployment of army following a major attack on Indian Parliament on December 13, 2001. There has been widespread use of landmines near border villages, creating hardship and chaos for a large part of the local population. Many people who went to their fields to water, tend, or harvest lost limbs in mine blasts.

Evacuation plans for people spread over 500 villages within 20 km of the border were well prepared, yet fear prompted families to leave their women, children, and costly possessions when they evacuated. There is unequal distribution of food in many families and women often get fewer calories then men. Malnutrition and poor health add to the physical weakness of women in general. The literacy rate is lower for women and unemployment is twice that of men. The rising unemployment among the rural population, the dwindling livestock and feeds, and risk of exposure to mines prompted the district administration to open “chara depots,” organize community “langars” at pivotal points, and to provide some minimum relief to the blast victims. A large number of employment works were also opened up under various rural development schemes.

To truly understand how the households responded to the war-like situation, we need to understand the pattern of domestic labor and decision-making. As mothers, partners, daughters, grandmothers, sisters, and aunts, women tend to do most of the household and care-giving work. An unequal division of domestic responsibility occurred after disasters, which often resulted in the absence of husbands. Women headed their households in these absences, and they were left to struggle alone, bearing the brunt of dual duties. The bottom line is that while women play a crucial public and private role, their voices have been unheard in organizational and community policy-making, including disaster response and recovery.

I vividly remember the morning of January 26, 2001. The clock was ticking towards 9 a.m. and I was scheduled to take the salute for the Republic Day Celebrations. I was conversing with my husband in Jaipur when we simultaneously experienced tremors shaking the ground. Very soon we learned that these few seconds had badly shaken most parts of Gujarat. A 7.7-magnitude earthquake had just occurred. Later we would learn that the two-minute quake had killed 20,000 people and injured many thousands more. The earthquake caused extensive damage to houses, buildings, roads, livestock, and natural resources. The area of heaviest impact was the northwestern district of Kutch and the towns of Bhuj, Anar, Bhachau,  and Rajkot. 

The cultural program was cancelled and we turned our efforts to assessing the local and regional losses. Relief work commenced immediately. The spontaneous out-pourings of money and supplies from the people of Sriganganagar was impressive.

My husband left that evening to work as a part of a U.N. Disaster Management Team, and continued in that capacity for the next few months. He shared some of his observations with me. After the earthquake, women in the disaster zone put all their skill, and their will, into helping survivors and protecting their families. He felt that women evacuees showed exceptional strength, firmness, and grit. They survived by becoming active in their own rehabilitation. They organized schooling for children and responded to community needs as best they could, working whenever possible.  Many women said that working helped them to forget about loss of their relatives and it kept them from falling into despair. Special search teams of women and girls were at work to locate displaced people, and their efforts resulted in reuniting lost children, old people, and many of the ill and wounded with their relatives.

The rest of the country and the international community also provided concern and contributions, but some were inappropriate. There were complaints of poor quality of relief grain, lack of drinking water and fresh vegetables, and the difficulties and cost of cooking. The use of plastic buckets donated for relief, rather than water pots, made water more liable to contamination. Delivery of water by tankers was not well organized, leading to chaotic distribution and spillage.

A major problem of Sriganganagar District is the propensity for breaches in the canals. Heavy rains also occasionally inundate low-lying areas and flooded villages. In 2001, record water levels forced the evacuation of poverty-stricken people of Alipura village—long after people with resources had left. Relief and the rescue operations continued throughout the night, leaving many victims and rescuers to spend the night in the open, next to meager belongings on camel carts. When the families had to be shifted to the nearest shelter with the sudden rise in the water level, the women, children, and the elderly were the weakest and often had the greatest trouble evacuating.

Gender directly affects vulnerability and exposure to risk. Women and children are more exposed to risk because their poverty and lack of mobility are factors. Housewives and young mothers displaced by floods found it more difficult to find wage labor and income-earning opportunities. This situation often threatened the security of their relationship within the family. Also, young girls who lost their savings and possessions during the floods basically lost their dowries, which resulted in them losing the opportunity to get married. This had serious implications for their social status, psychological health, and sometimes their survival.

Hit badly by the loss of cotton crops and scanty of rains in the last three years, 66 villages of Suratgarh were declared drought-affected. A number of relief works, including road projects, revival of traditional water sources, digging of ponds, and desilting of canals were undertaken to generate employment. The sight of a make-shift cradle fashioned from “odhna” (sari) open to comfort an infant in the scorching heat was a common sight. Lack of rain meant water sources were not recharged, and people had to wait long hours to collect water. Women and children would often spend six to eight hours daily to collect water.

The impact of drought is hardest on women because of their socio-cultural and  economic positioning within the family and community. The workload on women increased due to the shortage of water, ill health of animals, and sickness of members of their families. When men lose their jobs, they often go to find work elsewhere and leave their families behind. Women are also directly faced with the consequences of land degradation. It is almost always on exhausted land on which equally exhausted women toil. The migration of men reduces their role in family duties and obligations. Consequently, women’s work loads and responsibilities become greater, but they have not enjoyed the corresponding increase in influence and opportunities to assert themselves. Drought can have far-reaching impacts.

The study of many types of disasters over a long period of time has shown that behavior of men and women is quite often different. Also, in various stages of disastrous events, women’s views and contributions are rarely given full recognition. For example, in the post-impact period, most women are left to perform the traditional and under-valued tasks, such as childcare, food preparation, and domestic work, while men are more likely to leave the women to participate in more visible and highly publicized relief efforts. Women are seen as a vulnerable group, less unlikely to participate in planning, in preparation, and unable to cope in the wake of disaster. Gender relations determine people’s ability to anticipate, prepare, survive, to cope with, and to recover from disaster. Gender inequality embedded in the social and cultural fabric is the root cause of social vulnerability. The traditional view of women as victims leaves men to make decisions about their roles and needs and overlooks the vital work and unique perspective that women can bring to disaster management.

The changing nature of family also affects emergency response. The disappearance of joint and extended families, urban migration, separation of working couples, and the growing number of single parents raises new issues in disaster management. What happens to children when a single parent is needed for an emergency? What happens to children when both parents have emergency responsibilities? What are the childcare arrangements during disasters? Since most of initial search, rescue, and transport to medical assistance is done by the survivors onsite, the migration of men to find jobs may hinder initial response to local disasters. The longer life spans of women also indicates that elderly women may outnumber men and often live on their own. The aged may be reluctant to move out at shorter notice and the prospect of approaching disaster can be very daunting.

 Targeted awareness and demystification of stereotypes is required to remove the bias and allow the consideration of the specific and differing capacities of women. The strengths, knowledge, and skills possessed by men and women in preparing, managing, and rebuilding are different, and thus useful in different ways. Women should be seen as part of the solutions. A paradigm shift is required to inculcate gender consciousness and also to move from “relief” to “mitigation of disaster.” There is a need to consciously enlist women in disaster preparedness and in coping with its ensuing physical and mental stress. Enhanced leadership training can improve women’s awareness of local hazards, and their involvement in improving communication and delegating primary responsibilities in management of emergencies. Generating new attitudes towards women’s roles will improve the way we face emergencies, and allow us to deal more productively with the physical and societal impacts of disasters.

 Kiran Soni Gupta is a senior civil servant presently working as Commissioner, Command Area & Development at Bikaner in the Rajasthan State of India.  She is also Commissioner, Guides for Rajasthan State.  After finishing her education at Sacred Heart Convent School, she completed a Bachelor of Arts with Honors in English from Government College of Women,Ludhiana.  She then obtained her Master’s and doctoral degrees in Sociology from the Agricultural Universities of Punjab and Harayana, respectively.  Kiran Soni Gupta chose Civil Service as her career in 1985 and has worked in Kerala for the government of India.   Since 1994 she has dedicated herself to the development of people of Rajasthan, particularly women and children.  She has also administered the challenging border districts Sriganganagar and Rajasamand as District Collector and Magistrate.  Kiran Soni Gupta was instrumental in establishing the State Women’s Commission of Rajasthan.  She has worked as Managing Director of Kerala State Women’s Development Corporation; Director, Women and Children’s Department; Secretary, Rajasthan State Women’s Commission; and currently nurtures the Scouts and Guides movement.

            Kiran Soni Gupta’s accomplishments also include 23 research papers and 44 published articles in leading papers like The Hindu and Indian Express.  She is also an artist and an ardent promoter of art and culture across the world.  She has held a number of national and international shows, including recent shows in Tehran and Sri Lanka.  Her artwork in various techniques and mediums can be seen on www.kiransoniart.com and www.worldartemporium.co.uk.

            Kiran Soni Gupta is married to a civil servant, Mr. Madhukar Gupta, Divisional Commissioner of Bikaner.  She has a ten-year-old daughter, Narayani, and a son, Vishnu, aged seven years.