Emerging gender issues in the tsunami aftermath

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Emerging gender issues in the tsunami aftermath

• Knowledge Sharing on tsunami
• 9-10 May, 2005
• Reiko Tsushima, Gender Specialist, SRO Delhi

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• Why it is important to adopt a gender
  perspective.
• What were some sex specific effects of tsunami?
• What could be done in response?
• How will gender equality contribute to long term
  crisis resistance?

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Gender lens why is it important

• Human toll results in demographic changes
  information available point that 60-80 deaths
  were female. Different gender needs of survivors
  emerging
• Crisis magnifies existing inequalities
• Need to avoid reinforcing existing inequality in
  access to safety and health, to jobs, credit,
  land ownership, information, decision making,
• Enables us to look at impact on both productive
  and care work and their implications (risk of
  CL, early marriage etc).
• To arrive at the real situation of men and
  womens work, beyond assumptions
• Womens contributions to the local economy and
  community well being are often overlooked in
  policies for reconstruction

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Issues specific to women and girls

• Although legislation allows equal land ownership,
  traditional bias / practices may still exclude
  women
• Lack of voice in decision making, which affects
  level of benefits they see
• Women were engaged in productive activity as much
  as men, in the same sectorsbut their jobs were
  lower paid
• More households will start to rely on woman's
  earnings - needs for livelihood counseling and
  skills to secure better jobs
• Increase in care work, especially as they may now
  be called to assist single parent/ male relatives
• Sexual violence and physical abuse
• Early marriage
• Indebtedness, trafficking, child labour
• Womens SHGs weakened

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Issues specific to men and boys

• Easily overlooked in psycho social counseling
• Depression, alcoholism and abuse
• Need to start coping with non-traditional role of
  care giver for the household
• Limited skills to find new jobs
• Indebtedness
• Trafficking, bonded and child labour
• Recruitment into armed forces

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Targeted action

• Livelihood counseling, skills training and job
  matching (mainly for women but attention needs to
  be paid to the casual labourer, those to be
  relocated)
• Need to move from a welfare approach to one
  that sees women as economic agents
• Focus on non traditional skills training
• Supporting institutionalization of care work
• Involve men actively in counseling, as well as
  coping with new reality
• INFORMATION on their entitlements, job
  opportunities, gov. policies

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Mainstreaming

• Needs assessments that collect information
  disaggregated by sex and analyzes gender
  differences
• Include performance indicators that can track
  whether benefits reached men and women equitably
• Periodic evaluations that include gender equity
  as assessment criteria

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In summary how will this lead to crisis
resistance?

• By empowering women, they will be better equipped
  to claim benefits in post crisis situations, also
  be better able protect themselves from sexual
  violence
• Working with men to develop positive masculinity
  values that shun gender based violence will lead
  to womens empowerment
• Increase in womens income benefits entire
  household and helps to build the familys asset
  base
• Economic independence of women makes them less
  vulnerable at widowhood

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Thank you