Yeah. Okay, Okay folks, I think we're
gonna start, we might get some people wandering in
the end, but I want to have enough time
for dr dre and make his presentation and then hopefully
you guys will have questions and we have a little
bit of decisions. So I'm dr Maria lisa Christy
, I'm the Director of Women and Gender and International
Development, which is at the Office of International Research
, Education and Development of Virginia. This is our
Women in Development discussion series. We've actually been going
on for Over 10 years, this is the first
year that we've moved it to Newman Library too.
Hopefully make it easier for students to come and we
have about one speaker month Dr Durant will introduce in
just a minute is our speaker today. Oh,
I want to go ahead and announce the next speaker
and if you sign up, please sign in whether
you want to be on the list of or not
and you don't get that many emails from us,
but we do have signed it. So if you
haven't we can pass it around anyone. November 19th
We have dr Kathleen O. Reilly who's associate professor
in geography at texas A. And M. So
she's coming to do something. We've had kind of
this focus on sanitation and water and South Asia,
she's, her presentation is called no relief for women's
everyday experience of sanitation in urban India. Yeah.
And then another thing is I'm announcing two things.
I'm teaching a class on women gender development next spring
. So I put some flyers back there if they
run out and you're interested. I have more up
here. Last thing is we're promoting local businesses and
so we have a student that actually worked with us
, Jessica Schultz who is now known as the bagel
lady rather than Panera and we've always used in the
past, so Jessica made the bagels that are here
and she left some of her cards there. She
has a booth at the farmer's market every saturday and
Wednesday. And if you buy one of their T
shirts you get a free bagel for life every time
you show up you like the video spot teacher.
Mhm. Okay. Yeah. So the format dr
john will present till about 1 10 1 15 and
then we'll still have 10 15 minutes for discussion questions
and answers. We are live on Webex to include
the Northern national capital region, which we've never been
before. So I'm actually gonna hand out for these
so that there to over here to here and you
can turn them on after his presentation so that people
are going to hear if there's questions and answers over
there. So okay, so dr Duran is assistant
professor in the department of Geography and also the Virginia
Water resources Research Center. His interests include human ecology
of water reconstruction, resettlement, water hazards, interface
South Asia and the global South. And his talk
is women, gender norms and natural disasters. Examples
from South Asia. Thank you very much for taking
time to join us. Okay, thank you Doctor
Christie and it's a pleasure to be here in a
really nice room by the way. We're 3 60
monitors. Huh? Then welcome to the people in
the national capital region. I can't see you.
It's my understanding that you also can't see me.
You're just seeing the monitor. But trust me,
you're not missing much. Yes. Well, okay
, my name is luke Duran. And actually my
primary thrust of my research is water after that disasters
. And then in general, the intersection of disasters
and human water systems, water supply systems, water
distribution systems and so forth. And most of that
research, if not all of the research is in
South Asia, primarily India, but also Bangladesh and
Sri Lanka. This is a subject that just became
an interest of mine and a passion of mine and
I was able to actually publish a couple papers on
this, which is where I'm drawing this out and
one of them is in the current issue of geographical
review, which actually forms a lot of this presentation
. I should recognize a co author there, jennifer
Trivedi who's at University of Iowa at the time,
but it's not what Illinois State University. No,
for sort of helping us as well. But Basically
I have a couple papers on the tsunami, more
of a case study on the tsunami in South India
, the 2004 boxing day, indian ocean tsunami in
Tamil Nadu India and then more of a general natural
disasters, floods, cyclones, um, tornadoes and
such in Bangladesh. And this is sort of a
combination of both of those. It's mostly highly theoretical
, although there are some numbers. So I think
we need to begin because basically what we're looking at
is vulnerability and differences and vulnerability and in this case
gendered vulnerability. And this is really sort of basic
and dumbed down. But it's really important to look
at this in the sense of, we're looking at
vulnerability. What is at risk is one thing.
So in general risk, it's sort of exposure to
a hazard. For example, you live on a
flood plain. There is or isn't a flood wall
? Your house maybe is or is not built earthquake
standard. And these things tend to affect people more
equally right? It's a biophysical exposure versus vulnerability.
Is that within people who have a similar level of
risk, The people themselves, or population sets themselves
are very different. There are different levels of socio
economic status. There's males, there's females, there's
elderly people, there's people who are differently abled and
not that mobile. Um There's different levels of education
, different access to the resources, technology and so
forth among people with same levels of risk. Therefore
, for vulnerability is really an artifact of human systems
, right? And it's the social variables that come
together to further influence susceptibility and more of a social
format, Right? And that's what we're looking at
our gender vulnerabilities. And why does this matter?
It matters because of the bottom, Right. The
implications are there you are that you have a disaster
that strikes a country or neighborhood or a street,
right? And they might have the same level of
risk. However, if you look at the impacts
that actually manifest, the impacts will be different,
right? Because the people who they affect have different
levels of education, different socioeconomic status, um different
um amounts of knowledge on disasters and so forth.
Right? So that's what we're looking at is really
gender vulnerability. And I just wanted to start with
sort of those two concepts because they form the backdrop
of what's really going on here. So the background
is really this um, it's been argued and it
has been proven that on the average, right,
you can't say this for every single disaster in every
single place. But when you look at them as
a whole, on the average, women are more
likely to die from the initial impact of the disaster
compared to men and that after the disaster, women
still face additional issues and are therefore more likely to
confront issues of morbidity and mortality compared to men after
the disaster as well. And you basically come up
with these three points that when a disaster occurs,
women are more likely to die from the disaster to
face health issues or morbidity after the disaster and also
die after the initial disaster. I just have like
a little infographic there. Uh, it's not South
Asia, Southeast Asia, but showing in Banda Aceh
province of the 2004 tsunami, about 65% of deaths
were women, 35% of deaths were men. Because
of these gender vulnerabilities. Again, you're dealing with
a place with a similar level of risk, but
the impact when they reveal themselves are different. And
I'm arguing here that there's these gender vulnerabilities um that
are the root cause here. So what are the
numbers here? I'm showing to a large scale.
Uh there's an article in the annals of the Association
of American Geography annals of the Association of American Geographers
. Um this Eric Neumayer and his co author,
plumper, they've analyzed more than 4600 disasters across more
than 140 countries for 22 years. And they've added
up all the data. And when you put this
together, the data prove that disasters kill more women
than men and they either have killed more women initially
or lower the overall life expectancy after the disaster and
so on and so forth. You can read the
quote there, but basically disasters lower the life expectancy
of women more than that of men, meaning that
disasters and their subsequent impact on average kill more women
than men and or kill women at an earlier age
than men. Another one is an article. It's
actually a book called the gender terrain of disasters.
And if you look at a chapter in there by
how his father Gill, she hasn't met. An
analysis of more than 108 papers. Well, more
than 100 papers, I think it's 100. Um
, that concludes women are more likely to die from
disasters and that these discrepancies are especially apparent in lesser
developed countries. So looking at South Asia here,
I can just give some brief examples. Um,
1970 Bangladesh cyclone killed More women than men in every
age cohort except the youngest age cohort. The 1991
Bangladesh cyclone Killed 42 more women than men in the
1993 lived to an earthquake in India. Women are
less than half of the population, made up 55
of deaths. The 2004 tsunami, which was a
big one had more female deaths in all affected South
Asian countries, which is Sri Lanka and India,
as well as Indonesia, where most of the deaths
occurred in Nagapattinam, which is actually where I conduct
my research, my research on water and disasters.
Um, you had about 2400 female deaths versus about
1800 and 1900 male deaths in Cuddalore, which is
a district just north of Nagapattinam. Both of them
are in the state of Tamil Nadu in India.
You had about 400 female deaths and about 150 male
deaths. Um in Patan coupon, which I've been
to, there were no male deaths, only female
deaths and a lot of villages in that nearby area
, Women accounted for roughly 75 of deaths compared to
men. And even looking at a different type of
disaster other than tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes. Is
a tornado in 2005, tornado in Bangladesh. Um
If you look at the different cohorts based on ages
and sex, um females were the second highest cohort
for deaths other than elderly Individuals. And when you
look at just men and women and injuries, they
were 20, about 25 more likely to be injured
. So these are the numbers, I mean these
are the macro numbers and then I've um zoomed into
South Asia. So then our job here is to
to explore, to dig deeper and figure out what's
going on here. Right. Actually, I can
, Sorry, show you this real quickly to this
is the 1991 cyclone that I just mentioned. And
on the left you have um all the age cohorts
and their deaths um versus male and female. To
the 1991 cyclone in a rural village in Bangladesh.
And you can see the females are on the top
. They have left the empty circle and the males
are on the bottom. And you can see many
, many more female deaths and males. And what
I did is went to the same cohort on the
right and that is all deaths um in all of
rural Bangladesh at the same time period. Right?
So this is, so the right is normal.
That's what normally goes on. If you take all
of the vital statistics across Bangladesh in rural areas,
you come up with those h cohort, h sex
cohort deaths, right? And you have females and
males being quite similar. It should actually be a
little opposite. There should actually um the lower death
rates of females, which does tend to happen towards
the end. Uh, so there is a gender
bias there, but it's it's more minimal and you
can see that during the disaster, something extra has
happened, right? There's been some unnatural occurrence,
Right? Um, so what's going on? Well
, it's been postulated? And this is really just
, you know, in a strong sense that the
issue is really rooted in sex. This is a
natural thing. Women and men are different biologically anatomically
physiologically. They're different people. And this is the
root cause. And the arguments are, well,
men are faster. They can run away quickly and
escaped disastrous and hazards more quickly compared to women.
So women perish or are injured more easily. Men
are also stronger on average than women. They can
climb safety points and trees and telephone poles and on
top of rooftops and hold onto objects during winds and
and and uh, rushing waters and things longer than
women. Um, men can swim farther and tread
water longer. Things like this and that all these
factors. Also when you look at sort of biological
issues, our problem, it ties when women are
pregnant, right? And that adds even another uh
barrier on top of that, Right? And then
on top of that, men also way more right
? So they're less easily swept away by rushing waters
and high winds and so on and so forth.
Right. So this is sort of the basic arguments
and where the research began and it turned out that
this is not true, right? So while these
natural, if you want to call them differences on
average between men and women do account for a portion
a small portion of discrepancies and mortality. It does
not account for the full differences. Right? And
then therefore there must be something else going on.
And not only that to complicate this further, there
are actually cases when women are at an advantage compared
to men. Okay, So women typically have higher
body fat contents than women um and this helps them
actually cope in times of post disaster scenarios, when
aid is scarce, when food is scarce, uh
really because their body is a condition to cope with
this less food and calories. Um because inside households
already, especially in a country like Bangladesh where you
have scarce resources and you divide and allocate those resources
based on people's value. You can prosperity and misery
in the bengal about the bengal famine Back in the
30s or 40s. And this was a big issue
when food was scarce and you had to allocate scarce
resources among people with different societal values. And so
women um are used to coping with actually less food
and calories. Not to mention that their corpus actually
has higher fat body contents to begin with, to
help them in these times of lean foods. And
so, you know, there's actually cases where women
would actually be an advantage which would, you know
, throw these whole superficial arguments on their head to
begin with. And what it comes down to then
is if natural variables cannot explain these differences, there
must be something going on. There's something unnatural and
socially constructed going on, right, And this is
what's going on. So you can read this slide
that can also just read a quote that basically explains
it. This is from a paper of mine and
it says the exposure of women to loss and death
from disasters has been socially constructed through gender inequality and
asserted by andro centric societies within this constructed reality,
women have access to fewer health and food resources are
less mobile, granted less decision making capacity, experience
, inequities in legal market and political institutions and are
subjected to an overall lower level of human rights broadly
defined than men Together, these artificially determined inequities merged
to fabricate the complex web of female female vulnerability to
natural disasters. So what we have is basically before
the disaster occurs, women are already at a disadvantage
legally, uh politically, economically, um in terms
of capacity to make decisions, autonomy, mobility,
right. And then what happens then is during disasters
, this die has already been cast. And then
what happens is that these vulnerabilities that already exist and
have already been socially constructed in the normal non disaster
time are simply carried over into the sphere of disaster
, where they reveal themselves in cases of enhanced morbidity
and mortality. For women, right. It's already
a hand that has been dealt with them beforehand.
So that's what happens then the disaster occurs. So
these pre disaster vulnerabilities reveal themselves in the disaster.
What happens? Well, women here we're talking about
South Asia, but across space have less knowledge about
disasters to begin with. How do they form?
Um when do they typically come? A lot of
women, if you go back to the 1970 and
1991, uh cyclone in Bangladesh didn't even know there
was a disaster approaching and the women who did know
, found out secondhand through other male relatives or their
husband. Right? It was this filtered knowledge,
right? They're less aware of where to seek safety
when their mobility is curtailed. Um, and they
have less knowledge of public spheres outside of the household
when it's time to go out into that sphere into
that domain, to seek a resources to go to
safety. Places to seek help. There's just less
knowledge because of less lived experiences in those domains,
hindered ability to seek safety is further complicated by practice
of part of the so if you go to India
Pakistan Bangladesh, well, that's so sri Lanka,
you have this thing apart. The part that literally
means curtain or veil. And it's a physical practice
of literally covering your face and your hair and sort
of staying out of the glares of men and things
like that. But it also is uh constricts,
mobility and physical space keeps women that their spheres the
home and the men's fears is the public area and
that you spend most of your time in the household
or just in sort of the confines of around your
household or your body. And again, you have
less knowledge about what's going on. And with that
comes, you know, uh lower ability to make
decisions that can save not only their lives, but
other people. For example, if you go back
to cyclones and floods in Bangladesh in 1991. Cyclone
, the 2005 Cyclone 2008 cyclone, which I was
, I'm sorry flood, which I was therefore you
had women who are sitting at home ready to evacuate
but are scared to make that evacuation decision because they
have to wait for the husband to come home and
say, okay, I'm making the unilateral decision that
we're gonna pick up and we're gonna go uh and
some women perish in their households waiting for these uh
you know, the male guardian to come home to
make this decision for the family, even though they're
very capable of making this decision, right? And
on top of this, you have um other issues
, right? These are more gender norms and expectations
and roles that are on top of this. So
not only are we predisposed to enhance your video mortality
because of all the things that happened before the disaster
in normal times, but during the disaster, women
are expected to do stuff right. They have to
carry the infants hold Children's hands guide the elderly out
. This slows people down, right. There are
less valued in society. So there's a lot of
cases and I could read quotes um where you have
mothers and fathers holding on to two kids and rushing
floodwaters and they can't hold on and they have to
let one child go and they literally let the female
child go instead of the male child. Because a
male child is more valuable in society, more productive
in society. Um well we don't have to pay
a dowry. We will bring the woman into the
household, this person will make money, this person
will carry on the family name and so forth.
In addition to that, some things that are somewhat
innocuous turn out to become hazards in times of disaster
. So the long hair, which is really common
in South Asia, is more likely to get caught
on tree limbs and debris and brush in floodwaters and
hurricanes and things like this. Same thing with sari
saris are really long. Typically silk fabrics that are
about 12 ft long and these things are really long
and bulky and they get caught on stuff just like
long hair. Um loss of those saris and or
other clothing by women in the expectation of chastity and
purity and modesty ah comes together in the sense that
some women, when their clothes are stripped from them
, stay in the flood water and actually risk their
lives and sometimes perished because they don't want to be
taken out of the water by mail strangers totally naked
and to be a shame upon their family as if
this is a bad thing, right? It's a
dishonor and take away their chastity and these things you
can read the case study these exist. Another interesting
one is actually the gender pastime of swimming. Um
When kids are young, they're all swimming. The
boys and the girls are swimming and they're on the
beaches. But once they become adults, the girls
don't swim anymore. Okay. The boys still swim
. The men will go out fishing. They throw
nets, they go into the waters, but the
women don't. Well, to some extent, that's
, you know, cultural issue and maybe that doesn't
seem that dangerous. But then when the time comes
to swim, the floodwaters to escape to tread water
in such, they lack that skill that they used
to have. But gendered society sort of stripped them
of that as they became older. So that was
before the disaster. We've already set this up.
Right. Then during the disaster, we have those
pre disaster issues revealed themselves. In addition to that
other gender norms and expectations of childcare and the elderly
and and and the value in society and cultural practices
came up. And then we have after the disaster
. So I said after disaster, women are also
more likely to become or to perish okay. They
are less aware of where to seek aid and health
resources again because of that constrained mobility that already existed
because that's typically taken care of by male guardians.
Um there are lots of cases, especially after the
tsunami in 2004 and of cyclones in Bangladesh where you
know, there are limited aid resources and we don't
want people to get two of something and others only
get one of something, especially when everybody needs food
. Everybody needs water. Everybody needs healthcare. Right
? So they often typically give to the head of
household and then they can take you off the list
that household has been taken care of. Well you
have women showing up to get resources for their household
but they're denied access because head of household means male
. Head of household. Well what if you're there
to get it for your for the man in your
household? Right? Or what if you are a
single headed female household? Right? And so they
often can miss out on issues of aid of accessing
aid. Um They have less income and capital to
begin with. Right? And so if you then
throw a disaster upon them, they're dealing with the
same stressors but with less capital, less income,
less resources to begin with. Female doctors is an
issue. I mean most of the doctors are male
. A lot of women in South Asia will not
go to a male doctor. They just won't uh
huh can talk to them. This is true.
And so when you have a positive e of female
doctors, especially when aid workers come in and people
are in temporary transitional settlements, they have 34 doctors
. They're they're all male. You have women who
forgo seeking a health care because of the chastity and
modesty. And they might have to, you know
, bear parts of their body or answer questions that
they're not used to answering in front of males and
therefore for going, health aide, sexual violence,
emotional violence, physical violence, privacy, safety.
All these things become greater issues after the disaster.
And especially in transitional settlements, where you stick a
lot of people into makeshift areas of tents, where
women again are around men that they're not comfortable with
, that they don't know, there's forced to stay
inside their tents, inside their little places. There's
not a lot of privacy and security when they want
to go to the bathroom and take a shower.
And so they run into these issues. Women have
unique health issues that occur. One example is you
have an infant but your infants is lost. That
you have to you can issues of engorged breast right
, not able to express the milk. Other issue
is you have not enough water, not enough nutrients
. You're not able to produce milk with nutrients for
your child. It's another one in addition to one
of the major issues and this is actually become a
global movement now I think the club, Mhm.
Menstruation, menstruation hygiene management. And there's a lot
of these things going around in ASia and africa of
feminine hygiene products and making them from local materials.
One of the issues they don't exist in these post
disastrous settlements. Um, with that then comes issues
of infections and rashes which women obviously face and men
do not in those cases after disaster as well.
Um House land capital is often taken by the in
laws when the husband dies and then the woman and
the family are sort of left to the wayside.
Um, single head households, right, single head
households, one they're going to face additional stress with
capital with resources of social networks with finding people to
take care of the Children. And this is complicated
by two things. One is that in South Asia
most single head houses are females, so one they're
gonna have trouble getting aid. Uh And to another
issue is that a lot of single head households are
created after disasters when men take off and sort of
skipped the scene. And it's called post disaster flight
of men. Another issue is just getting coerced into
sort of black market activities of kidneys taken out,
human trafficking, prostitution, coerced into marriage, right
? If you are a man who has lost his
wife, you're often looking for a bride because you
need someone to take care of your Children, because
that's not what you do. And you don't have
experience. Do you have a lot of young girls
getting pushed into marriages? They don't want to,
On the other hand, you might have a guy
who loses his wife, but he has a young
daughter that he can't take care of and doesn't really
want to take care of. And so you kind
of coerced them to get married to sort of get
rid of them. So you get it from both
sides and then why does this even exist? Sort
of there's a systemic issue as well. Right?
So even the whole process that manages this is gender
. So disaster management itself is gender. So you
have this whole cycle that I just mentioned of during
the disaster. And the post disaster issues actually repeats
itself because the whole system that manages it is already
gendered. So disaster management, which is a it
manages a cycle, right? We have preparedness,
mitigation response, recovery. All of these fears are
gendered because of where they came from. So this
started basically by civil defense, the military, national
security agencies, urban planners, engineers. These are
the people who manage disasters, who bring aid to
marshal resources, who fly in airplanes, who do
all these things who do their urban planning, the
engineering of the urban environment, coastal sorts of things
. And women are just under represented in these groups
. That's why we're trying to encourage women into stem
and things like that. And this is becoming an
issue that is trying to be addressed by agencies such
as the U. N. And the World Health
Organization. And so the United Nations International Strategy for
disaster reduction. They came out the report recently and
they now concede that a gender perspective should be integrated
into all disaster risk management policies, plans and decision
making processes and equal access to appropriate training and education
opportunities for women should be guaranteed because they're trying to
close this part of the loop. So the conclusions
then really are that women are more vulnerable than men
to disasters. It's not due to a difference in
sex, but instead failures in societal organization. These
are socially constructed realities. Women have capacity and women
are resilient, but their capacity and resilience is suppressed
by patriarchal societies. It's really more than that.
It's really their autonomy and their agency is constricted and
they're not allowed to use their resources and their faculties
and to make the decisions is not that dedicated.
It's that it's all suppressed and that this makes them
more vulnerable On average women dying experience morbidity at greater
rates um because of pre disaster vulnerabilities that are carried
over into the disaster and post disaster spheres. And
not only that, these vulnerabilities are typically actually magnified
and not only that re ified to go on into
the future. On a positive note that even though
this is sort of a pitiful cycle that I'm describing
, uh we can change it, right? So
that's I guess my my bright point there, I
have like sort of what I feel are essential things
that need to be addressed in the future. I
mean, the first is how can we mitigate these
unnatural and socially constructed underpinnings of disaster? These are
not natural. These are things we can overcome.
So how do we do that? How in general
, during disasters, how can we relax these expectations
and gender roles and norms to decrease mortality and morbidity
? Because this stuff is avoidable. We shouldn't have
to be dealing with for vulnerable populations themselves. How
do they attempt to dismantle these systemic and structural and
institutional impediments to their safety and well being? And
how should we go about gender streaming of the formal
and informal settings, um, that manage disasters.
So you can read actually as a book here because
I have a bunch of books on this. If
anyone wanted to borrow one of them here is gender
too sensitive disaster management. So how do you go
about gender mainstreaming disaster management and how do you actually
measure gains in these in these spheres? So,
um, that's about it. I want to just
close with two slides and just say that gender disaster
is a field that has a lot of connections to
other places. It shares attributes with ecological feminism,
eco feminism, ecology, feminist, political ecology,
market Marxist geography. And the focus actually is more
than just gender and disaster. It's really a focus
on vulnerable groups, women being one of them.
So actually, within this domain of research, you'll
see lots of studies on the vulnerabilities of elderly people
with low incomes with low mobility, um, and
differently abled marginalized populations and subaltern populations in general race
and class, especially with Katrina has become a big
issue within this literature. And of course, gender
is broader and sex is broader than sex, right
? It's there's various genders, There's various sexist sexual
orientations and now this is becoming another avenue of this
research and the intersection of men and disasters is also
a field of research. It's very small. There's
currently now two books in prep and the argument is
, men also confront issues during disasters that are unique
to me. Okay. They are expected to act
like a man to be the breadwinner, um to
support the family and when they can't do this,
this creates extra pressures for them. It predisposes them
to alcoholism, increased drug use. They often take
it out in the form of sexual violence and emotional
violence and these things. That's one of the issues
for that post disaster flight of men that I mentioned
. There's actually an increase of suicide among males.
Also because men also have expectations from society that they're
supposed to be able to handle and act like a
man and take care of these things and manage the
family, right? And when they can't do this
, the expectations also have issues for them. So
I don't want you to think that this is just
a women's issue. Um the hopes has ended the
event that says, mhm. And that's actually where
I just, okay, now we have another screen
. Just what, yep. See you guys,
that was it. I just wanted to, well
, we're back. Say if you're interested in this
, I would just leave this up. I have
some of these books with me, but there are
a lot of scholars in this field. I have
them in alphabetical order. These are specifically ones uh
mainly for South Asia, but some of them are
more abroad. Um, I have some of these
books with me. Um they're either really seminal texts
in the field or South Asia specific. And there
are websites and list serves. There's gender and disaster
network. You can join, they send out emails
about every week when disasters occurred trying to find solutions
to these problems. Whenever there's new papers or texts
or websites and things, they poured them out.
There's gender climate change, uh, organization. They
also have a list serve and run by geographers is
Ravens. It's radical interpretations of disaster. It's basically
Marxist geography and and the human side, the complex
side of creating disasters. So That's where have you
asked me to end up 110? I think I'm
writing targeted. Thank you very much. So there's
a couple of these things on if you would just
hit the button, whoever's name. So they heard
me. Yeah. One over there. I'm actually
interactive, but I stayed here because there's a microphone
and we have some. Did you shut the box
? Is that what you did it does anybody here
who knows? It just popped up and said,
I know people ended, so I didn't know,
maybe cut them out. But I'm actually like to
move around. I don't like to be a caged
animal. Well, let me give you one of
the, be your mike, you can just hold
it anywhere near. You have to Okay. It's
on yes. Green light. Yeah, exactly.
What those other folks? Yes, but may not
be on there anymore. Okay, questions discussion.
Okay. Um, so I was wondering, you
talked a lot about risk and we can calculate relative
risk and perceived risk, um, and vulnerabilities related
to that, but that's not the same. Do
you think that by looking at a lot of the
variables you've been talking about, it would be able
to be developed that you could calculate somebody's supposed vulnerability
to and put it into these risk equations? Yeah
. So the answer is yes. And it has
already been done. So there's someone who's Susan Qatar
, it's a geographer, University of south Carolina She
came up with in the 90s like early 90s.
It's called so be so we are the social vulnerability
index. Um it's primarily used in America because we
have a lot of census data and free access to
data and we can have it more spatially discrete of
where that data comes from that census blocks and tracks
and things like that. And so it calculates lots
of things like age, income raise education level and
all these other things. And it Basically packages it
to come up with your level of vulnerability or risk
and you can do that for different population sub populations
individuals and so forth. There's also other uh capacity
and resilience in disease and so on and so forth
. But if you're interested I would look up at
Susan Qatar social vulnerability index and it's heavily, heavily
, heavily cited and used for about 20 years.
Didn't I used. Yeah. Yes sir. So
the inequalities that manifest themselves in South Asia are pretty
prevalent and you can see that uh media and research
it a lot of different venues and I'm just curious
are these outcomes for women after disasters and they kind
of universal across the globe no matter what the city
area, they're not universal across the globe and they're
also not universal across types of disaster, which is
important. So um in general lesser developed societies have
a larger discrepancy or gap in mortality and morbidity rates
and it tends to get more leveled and about even
with higher levels of development as in general trend.
Although you have to look individually at different countries or
different disasters. Um but what's interesting is actually the
type of disaster. So I'm actually, I should
imagine I'm talking about natural disasters when you get into
things like unnatural disasters like chemical leaks or gas explosions
and things. These actually might typically kill more men
than women, but I'm specifically actually a natural disasters
here. But within natural disasters, things like earthquakes
, things like earthquakes, the main vulnerability, there
is a temporal component of where are you during that
short window of the tremors, Right. And it's
basically people who are in structures are more vulnerable than
those who are outside. Now. That can have
a gender component if you have women inside homes and
men out in the fields are out fishing, but
it could also be men in factories or working in
, you know, so that one there gets into
a structural and a temporal issue. Engenders is a
component there, but I wouldn't say it's the overwhelming
component, it's more of like where you are.
So actually the type of disaster is extremely important.
So, but in earthquakes actually, you often see
more female deaths because men are often in the fields
or fishing or something and women are at home and
wealth can also be tricky there because although you might
have a very nice home, it's typically still not
built to earthquake standards and if you're a poor person
, your house is probably just one level and it
might be thatch or something and if it crashes,
it's not, will injure you, but maybe not
kill you. But if you're a more wealth,
you have a two or three level home made out
of bricks. Now, trust me, it's not
built to earthquake standards, all of DACA will crumble
if we have an earthquake, there's studies on this
. Um, but actually by portraying your influence by
a better building materials and and taller structures you've actually
when an earthquake comes made yourself less likely to die
even though you're more wealthy. So these things can
are very tricky that small scales in an individual circumstances
. Yes. I have there been any successful efforts
to address some of the problems that you mentioned in
a culturally mindful way for instance women not knowing how
to swim because it's seen as a male activity because
they don't I want to expose their bodies. Have
people been able to address some of these problems?
Well you know still being respectful of the culture because
it's one thing to go in and say well just
get over it. You know you're going to die
if you don't do this. So Have people been
able to make two rooms? Uh huh. A
lot of disaster organizations like the Red Cross and the
U. N. And disaster management teams in countries
are now involving women now. How does that actually
shape policies and practices and how is her voice received
and taking into consideration? I don't know. I
know women themselves are trying to formalize what they do
informally and so non women in Bangladesh and India are
getting more credit um for managing resources in the household
. So they often will take the gold and bury
it somewhere. So then come back later and draw
upon that as a resource. They're storing food and
like puffed rice and like smashed rice that you can
don't have to cook or you can cook it really
really quickly. Um So that you have resources and
things like that. Um They have beds that you
can stack up called Chucky so like the water can
come into your house and you can still sleep and
women doing this, you have women who are having
like income generating opportunities of making uh female sanitary napkins
, pads out of local materials and especially in disaster
situations, women are starting to with long hair are
putting their hair up in times of disaster when there's
a flood or cyclone. So this thing that I
talked about, the hair doesn't happen. They're also
not wearing saris during these times instead of wearing like
a solar companies, which is like a pajama pants
and like a loose fitting shirt, so it won't
like kind of get torn off and get caught on
stuff as easily. So they are doing things that
are recognized and these things are slowly permeating the formal
sphere and becoming recognized. But is that enough?
No. And to what extent is this happening?
I don't know and there's a long way to go
. But there are, I would say, bright
spots, somewhat. Kayla in your presentation, you
mentioned how these vulnerabilities um female vulnerability can be caused
due to like unnatural and socially constructed variables. Um
And I was just thinking like in my opinion,
um can that be the result of how um for
example, in India how they view um feminism and
masculinity? And because I guess I was wondering could
you speak on some of the differences that you have
um experience, I guess in your time there,
and how maybe the U. S. View feminism
and how maybe in India they view that cause masculinity
. So you're getting into the epistemology of feminism versus
masculinity across cultures, which is extremely difficult. And
this is not my primary field of research. Um
I can't speak to. There's some been some issues
in India recently where there was a rape in Delhi
, and there are some other things like that.
And there's been a lot of interviews with high level
court judges. I've been dr Schmidt knows about this
, and government officials, and even the person who
raped this girl himself, interviewed from jail by the
BBC, basically saying these problems happen. But it's
women's fault, they dressed provocatively, therefore it's herself
, it's her fault. She shouldn't have fought the
rape. If she wouldn't have fought the rape,
I wouldn't have killed her, She should have just
laid there and let it happen. You know what
, they don't know what I'm talking about. Yeah
, I mean, there was it was a crucial
all the judge or something. Um, and so
, I mean, this is a whole different view
of feminism and masculinity, even when you're trying to
address problems, because even have this being said by
government officials or like if you smoke or dress like
this, you're asking for it to happen. Right
? And so it's the women's fault for for luring
the men in. Um, I will just say
women are held on a very high pedestal in India
and Bangladesh. They are really valued for their reproductive
capabilities in terms of generating culture. Um, and
generating offspring. But when it comes to productive capacities
, that's um, you know, not valued so
much or that's left up to the men. I
don't know. It's really difficult question. Okay,
but there are differences Uh, between the two political
units of South Asia North America and everywhere else.
What type of education do you think would help a
teacher make equality resonate more with George is in the
south education. Um, well, they're trying to
do different movements of increase like uh women in education
to begin with by providing toilets in schools, providing
meals so that kids stay in school longer because some
kids just have their meal and then they go home
for the day and to keep kids in school.
I would say like to some extent there ahead of
us in a female prime Minister, female governors and
uh these things, right? But there's the same
thing in Bangladesh and Pakistan, but it's also really
contradictory that women themselves are really behind in almost every
measure. So I mean there is a value of
women, but it has a ceiling and when it
comes to making decisions and things, I don't education
, I mean that's actually that's where you have to
start though, right? I mean, eventually these
things are all socially constructed, right? Because they're
not natural differences so that if they're socially constructed there
in our minds, right? And so we really
have to change people's minds. So how do you
change people's minds? But with with education and wiping
out ignorance. So I I agree education is uh
way to begin. And we got into the gender
mainstreaming of not only disaster management processes but the political
sphere, the capitalism, the sphere of markets,
the educational sphere as well. And promoting these programs
is they like internal efforts or are there there's international
efforts and there's a lot of after disasters, funds
are there for reconstruction and recovery and different programs and
for risk reduction and vulnerability reduction. And so some
money comes, for example, to the um from
the U. N. It goes to uh like
the state level disaster management office which might give it
down to the districts. And then they have some
different activities. Actually attended one of disaster risk reduction
um workshops with funds from the U. N.
Run by the district of Nagapattinam in India. They
went out to a village, they brought me,
they were so proud and their main piece of information
was don't expect the government to help. We have
too many people and everybody needs to help. So
what you need to do is that what a disaster
comes. You need to learn to take care of
yourself. That was what their big message was.
And it was it was really eye opening and really
shocking. But to some extent there being quite blunt
and saying like we don't even have the resources and
the capacity to deal with this and it's gonna take
a while to get to you. But we can't
even run the normal situation, let alone when disaster
happens. And then the people themselves, they found
him in the front to them and they said how
dare you come and tell us how to deal with
the disaster really have a disaster every day of our
lives. And we never get help from you.
We know how to do it. You should actually
come in and do real things to help what we're
already doing. It became a big fight. But
anyway there's international organizations, domestic religious and a lot
of funds trickle in. So like the the U
. N. And the who programs would be run
by like little offices of people who are hired for
like a year contract to work out of the district
collector's office to run a program when the funds run
dry and they're gone. Mhm. Uh I was
just wondering um what are your opinions on the impacts
of urbanization in developing countries with disasters and maybe disasters
? Is helping level inequalities or is it kind of
just making things worse with higher population densities? Yeah
, Well you can see a direct correlation between numbers
of disasters and the urbanization process because the more people
you stick into an area, the more humans interact
in a way that part herbs the environment and creates
hazards and risks the impervious surfaces which don't allow runoff
, which allowed for waterlogging and flash flooding. And
all of these things. Also with urbanization comes taller
buildings in places where building codes and oversight and things
are not followed well and things are done more shoddily
and quickly. So the urbanization um process and also
it's the way you measure disasters actually to be considered
a disaster, you have to meet some certain requirements
. So one of them is a number of people
affected, another is a number of deaths. Another
one is amount of economic impact, economics impact.
Is there all the economic impact has been increasing because
we're putting more and more infrastructure that is value that
more and more money in the way of hazards.
Right? And so now there's more disasters because there's
more infrastructure that can be affected by disasters to meet
this economic component on top of that, in those
places you have people crammed in and that infrastructure is
of low quality and it all comes together. But
urbanization is clearly an issue and it's the concentration of
people. It also gets into things like epidemics and
diseases after the disaster like colorado giardia and things like
that, so into sanitation, but just go to
Dhaka after it rains and the main streets will be
flooded with the foot of water and the buses are
stuck and it's like that for the rest of the
day And I can guarantee you if you didn't have
about 25 million people there, the water would percolate
a little better. Maybe one more question or comments
callen. Okay. Um I guess just kind of
follow up to that question about urbanization, Do you
think that like that there are benefits I guess to
that organization in terms of creating less or less vulnerabilities
for women, Like would that provide what organization provide
more sustainable? Um like ways for energy or resources
? It's a double edged sword. I mean on
one hand, you get all the negative things I
just mentioned on on your hand, urbanization is associated
with increases in income, increases in access to resources
, income, I'm sorry, increase in uh levels
of education and all those things would positively affect women
. However, on top of that though, you
have all these negative sort of ancillary things going on
like the spread of diseases and sanitation and impervious surfaces
and things like that. In terms of sustainability would
be more looking at economies of scale, we have
more people in capital in one smaller area so we
can spread the cost of that are the benefits across
, you know, across more people and things like
that. That gets one of the economies of scale
. Um urbanization has improved people's standard of living.
I wouldn't say quality of life, quality of life
is a whole different measure in various objective standard of
living, you can put into things like life expectancy
and nutrition and education and income and things like that
. So standard of living increases which helps women,
but you're still carrying all the cultural things with you
and expectations and religious views and even, you know
what's sad thing is even if your family doesn't believe
it your neighbors do and your relatives do, and
so you're still subjected to this, right? And
those things are going to take. That's a generational
social lack of those things changing. We can engineer
things differently. We can provide better water. We
can have warning systems and modeling and vulnerability indices.
And that will help. But ultimately it comes down
to a the social lag and the cultural lag of
changing people's mindsets, which is going to take,
Well, it's been a couple of 1000 years now
. So it's going to take some generations. But
being in urban areas actually exposes you cosmopolitanism, different
people, different ideas. You know, So those
things would actually say also get helped in urban areas
. But yeah. Okay, great. Thank you
so much. Teachers and department charities. I have
a hazard class next semester. Okay, Thank you
for coming. Did anybody not sign up so we
can get you the sign up sheet? All right
. Mhm. Mhm. Yeah. Okay. Hello 985 00:53:23.250 --> A:middle L:90% ? Yeah.