[NOISE]
I guess my way
into gender and development has been largely
through my students, especially adult students.
I know there's several in the room.
[NOISE] They're all embarrassing me.
My background is actually civil engineering,
and I came into the US with PhD in technology and policy.
As I've gone through my career,
the civil engineering, technology,
and policy evaluation, all this work,
this all seems to blend
in and come back in very interesting ways.
That's why I think it applies to
being a moderator on this panel is
because the panelists work in areas that I work on, especially in water sanitation,
preferably in this area.
Basically, it's a real pleasure
to be your lead moderator today.
We have Dr. Elizabeth Jiminez and Luke Juran.
What we will do is a similar structure to
what we've done for other sessions.
We'll have 20 minutes time for our speakers to present,
and then [NOISE] we'll have Q&A where we'll take
a few questions and try to come with an answer.
I'm going to begin by introducing
our first speaker, Dr. Elizabeth Jiminez.
She has a PhD in Development Economics from
the University of Notre Dame and is currently
a professor and researcher at CIDES-UMSA,
which is a graduate program of
interdisciplinary social sciences at
the Universidad Mayor de San Andres in Bolivia.
[NOISE] Her research issues
focus on labor and employment,
[NOISE] economic repair,
[NOISE] climate change, and sustainability.
Dr. Jimenez is a research coordinator of
FATE Project in Bolivia which focuses on
feminization and agricultural transformation impacts for
the agriculture that is
supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation.
It's my great pleasure
to welcome our [inaudible] in front
of you and [inaudible] [APPLAUSE]
Ralph, thank you very much for the introduction and
also thank you to the organizers for
inviting me and having the opportunity to share with you
some of the results of
this research that's taking place in Bolivia.
My presentation's title is
Rural Livelihoods Strategies in Globalized Markets.
I'm going to focus specifically
about quinoa producers in Bolivia.
This research is part of
a larger research that's taking place,
funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation,
and we'll be all looking at the impacts of
small-scale agricultural production
by [inaudible] to export.
We are working with quinoa in Bolivia, quinoa producers,
but we're also working in Rwanda with
potato producers and corn producers
that also produce for exports.
Coffee producers in Laos and cardamom producers in Nepal.
It's a very interesting comparative analysis about
the impacts of such production
aimed at exports in all these countries.
But now I'm just going to focus, for now,
on quinoa producers which
is what we are doing in Bolivia.
What are the current challenges of such producers?
Well, in Bolivia who was,
until 2017, the number 1 producer of this
grain in the world,
but now Peru is number 1.
We certainly came down to the second position still,
but this is a globalized context
where there are more actors,
all the new actors,
entering in the context.
We have officially currently and actually by 2017,
this is the date, the year,
we have this information.
There are 20 countries in the world producing quinoa for
export [inaudible] [NOISE] ,
and 120 countries that are testing to produce this crop.
China is one, which currently
actually China is the biggest buyer
of quinoa and I forgot what the yield was,
but of course, the plan is to produce quinoa in China.
These are the big challenges that
quinoa producers, small-scale producers,
these are the ones who disapprove them,
are facing in terms of participating
in this globalized market chain.
I'm just quickly going to go over
what has happened in recent years.
This is the evolution of prices
throughout time since the 1970s.
What we see is the major increase,
as you can see in about 2014.
The price went up because of greater demand of
the community and the recognition of
all the properties associated to this grain.
Then followed by a slowdown
[NOISE] which obviously has implications on producers.
Obviously, as a result of [NOISE] increase in prices,
we also have an increase in
the land use for the production of quinoa,
as you can see going up,
and in the volume of production.
I'm not going to go into details,
but this is basically that shows the quinoa move that
took the peakest year,
I think, where you have the higher price and
most production levels was 2015.
From then on, we experienced a slowdown.
We're talking about, as I said before,
quinoa producers in the southern Bolivian highlands,
in the southern part of Bolivia.
We have here a picture of one of them,
these are small-scale producers that have
traditionally produced this crop in this region.
What you see in the background,
there's actually a salt lake
that's also located in that region.
Quinoa is produced traditionally around this lake.
As I said before,
we have a salt lake.
[NOISE] Now this second is very
interesting actually too because mining also takes place,
the deepest [inaudible] mines were created there,
but also more recently,
a project of the industrialization of
lithium resource is taking place in
[inaudible] Salar de Uyuni salt lake, in this region.
There are always competing activities,
destructive activities, competing for natural resources,
one that are taking place in this region.
We're talking about a region where 80 percent of
quinoa produced in Bolivia
is being produced in this region.
What's important to note is that we're talking
about small to medium-scale producers
that largely produce family labor using,
traditionally, they have used
always labor-intensive technologies.
Recently, they have introduced some tractors,
some tractor testing development because of
the incentives to increase their agricultural frontier.
They also have recently
introduced some temporary hiring of
labor because family labor is not enough
anymore at certain periods of their agricultural cycle.
Another characteristic of quinoa production in Bolivia,
in some of the Bolivian highlands,
is that it's produced in
combination with the llamas and alpacas.
This is the sustainable,
traditional way to produce quinoa.
You don't just expand
the field and try to do as much as you
can because you need some very similar pasture land
for the llamas and alpacas,
and then you use organic manures for llamas and so on.
This is how traditionally,
it has been produced.
What we did for this study is we try to show that,
in fact, quinoa producers are different.
They have different livelihood strategies,
not all of them are
completely engaged in production of quinoa,
and not all of them have
increased their agricultural frontier
to keep producing more.
There are major differences [LAUGHTER] and
such differences are important
in terms of different locations.
[NOISE] To look at those differences,
we have identified livelihood strategies
[LAUGHTER] of quinoa producers.
Our objective is to identify
diversification and differences first
of all and also diversification
in terms of the livelihood strategies.
[NOISE] We also are
interested in looking at sustainability,
both for the economic perspective and social perspective,
but also from the ecological perspective to see to
what extent such livelihood strategies are [NOISE]
sustainable in the median and in the long run.
But not only in terms of income-generating activities,
but also in terms of the management of the land.
As I said before, traditionally,
you produce quinoa and you also have to raise llamas and
alpacas [inaudible] type of food.
Obviously, we're interested in women's participation.
Just very briefly, I want to run over some of
the results which are basically summarized in this chart.
We have done surveys,
we're building a database in this region.
What we have done through this cluster analysis,
which is a quantity type of analysis,
we have identified
five significantly different language strategies.
This is important because in
the debate in the modern era you hear that,
well it came from society contaminating the environment,
they have extended the production,
they have localized gammas and manufacture a bit.
This has major implications of sustainability.
What we have seen is that
not all of them are doing the same,
and not all of them have their strategies.
They don't have the same implications.
This is what you see in the chart.
Five significantly different livelihood strategies.
I have ranked them from
the higher [BACKGROUND] to the lower income levels.
You see that the yellow dots there is
showing that the first group
has a higher income levels household,
and it goes down to
the last one that has a lower [NOISE] household income.
Not all producers have
benefited from this boom in this function key one.
There are significant difference in the income levels,
but more so in
the composition of the household income level.
I have to tell you, we did
this work actually with one ET student.
It was really putting
some figures in the composition of income levels
in each livelihood starting.
You see that this symbol here, those bill,
which shows that for this group,
the share of the household income level
comes from participation outside the family farm.
Mostly wage employment, but also own account employment.
Not from key one,
but from all of the activities that they do.
What you see in brown,
that brown and light brown,
that's the share of
the household income that
comes from quinoa production.
You see there a little llama with his calf there,
that shows the income that comes from raising llamas and alpacas.
We see this buy with money,
the money sign there that transferred as,
bonds, but also remittances.
What we see is that
the composition of household income is very diverse,
and particularly in the group
that has the highest income level,
which is this first one.
Income is not dependent in production of
quinoa but rather other activities
outside the family farm.
As we go down the second group,
we see that they combine quinoa production with
the participation outside the farm: working as drivers,
construction workers, tourist guides, and so on.
In the same line, we see that, yes,
this is the group that largely specializes in production,
has taken advantages of the going up of the prices.
The third group is very
interesting because what we see is
that household income comes from quinoa production,
but also from llamas and alpacas and is more or less the same share.
The last group slightly dependent on remittances,
bonds and transferences given by the government.
Basically this last group is formed
by households that their age are old.
We have characterized each of
these livelihood strategies in terms of the capital,
education level, and so on.
The main message here is that
the differentiation is present.
Not all of them do the same thing.
There are large differences and
significant differences in income levels.
Not all have this high income levels
and that mobility and
going outside quinoa production is visible.
These are the three important message,
I'm not going to go into each of
the five different livelihood strategies that we
have characterized because they are
different in terms of human capital,
social capital, and so on.
Basically the result of this analysis show as I
had said before that there are
major differences in terms of income,
and there appears to be a trade-off between what we call
socioeconomic
sustainability and ecological sustainability.
Attaining the ecological sustainability is
costly and that women's participation,
as the rest of the time,
I'm trying to show these three results.
What do we mean by there is a trade-off between
social economic and ecological sustainability?
Socioeconomic sustainability, a proxy for
it is related to the income levels,
the accumulation of capitals, financial, human, social.
Ecological sustainability, we have approximated by
a proxy of how land is being managed.
I would want us to go back to our first graph.
What we see is that for a group that has the llama in it,
a circle is the sustainable livelihood strategy
in terms of ecological sustainability.
Why? Because they are not just producing quinoa,
they're not just depending in other incomes,
wages outside of family farm,
but they're carrying out a AKU group traditionally,
as in part how quinoa is being
produced in this region.
They will use organic manure
and they will combine quinoa
production with the llamas.
Remember, to have llamas you have to
have land basically, pastures available.
You use all you have to
land for production of quinoa ,
obviously you won't to be able to raise llamas.
This is a sustainable way but
yet is the lowest income levels.
The yellow line, it shows that
the household income is very low.
That's why we say that
the ecological sustainability is not
profitable in the current context.
Incentives are oriented to
experiment and produce quinoa.
What about women's participation?
Which is the topic of being here, right?
What we have seen is
that participation of women has increased,
as a result, greater economical opportunities
given by commercialization.
Moreover was even more important to you,
the participation in leadership positions,
at producer associations, has also increased because
such associations have become very important.
These are small-scale producers,
and the way they engage
into commercialization and exports is
through associations that have smaller association,
and then we have the big one, the national one,
where they all engaged to.
The associations have become more interestingly,
in terms of space,
and women's participation has also been present there.
What we had seen here,
and I have the circle there,
is that in the likelihood strategies that
are more oriented to
intensification of the production of quinoa ,
that's where we see more participation of work.
Not in the sustainable ones,
because there are not many incentives to do this,
there are a few households there to start with,
and more opportunities for commercialization and exports
are actually who become
largely involved with the production.
Those are the two likely strategies
that we have identified.
How is participation taking place?
We see here, two producers sharing the cleaning up,
the first cleaning up of the
quinoa grains in the field.
We see more engagement
in the direct production of quinoa.
Also, obviously attached to
a gender vision of labor
traditionally associated with the fact that,
for instance, a woman is in charge of the activities
such as cleaning up the
[inaudible] here, the second stage.
I have a picture here,
namely in charge of dragging the
[FOREIGN],which is the [inaudible].
Associations have become very
important because it's through
these instances that producers
export the grain to such as the US and Europe.
It's through association because
they produce at small scale,
and medium scale, so they cannot
directly engage in export.
Associations have become
an important space for one's participation.
We see them here in a very distinctly meeting of
the large association or
polygamous association that's called [inaudible].
They have also taken leadership positions,
and here we see a brave young woman,
Vice President of this association,
which is very new.
Such an association started
to be organized back in the 1970s,
they have a very long history,
and this is not just very recent,
but they were very male oriented.
Currently, we can see
that there's more participation of women,
but as I said before,
not only participating there,
but also taking leadership positions.
Here, what I end up to try
to explain why this is taking place.
I felt that yesterday I found
this work in gender and leadership in
agricultural cooperatives done by Mary.
Thank you.
I thought that was so interesting because
we're dealing with similar issues, right?
What she did, she pointed out the key factors that
explain or that can become
barriers of greater participation in [inaudible] system.
The fact that there are leadership positions
in cooperatives, in her case,
at that date, they just have to become voluntary work.
Therefore, it's not
really major incentive to participate.
Also, women point out
the fact that they have no education levels
to become part and to
be able to be at the top of this organization.
The say like, "I stopped using a pen when I was 13."
Then we have this domestic work vegetable production.
What we did in that case study
in Bolivia, just to finish up,
is to see in
the likelihood of the strategies that I
showed that the certification.
What are the differences in terms of
how women are participating?
Now, the Bolivian system is a bit different because
in the last 10 years there have been
major achievements in terms of education,
and we were able to close a debt,
not completely the gap between men and women education.
At last, in this particular side of the country,
education levels are over the average.
We have, as I've shown you before,
the Vice President that actually has a university degree.
In our interviews and in the qualitative information we
collected, indeed gender generations,
they are able to fill these positions because they have
more human capital than their
grandparents or their mothers did.
There is this difference
that explain why they're different.
Such an organizations would in case go back,
as I said before, to the '70s.
So they're very well rooted and organized,
and they are paid.
They have gone beyond
just an organization that works in a basis and so on.
We have been able to solve these two issues,
low education and also [inaudible].
With new consumers, more
is what's happening inside the household.
I'm actually inspired by
the presentation this morning to
working with this women's empowerment index.
We tried to do it,
but we ran into some issues related to how to do
the used time survey
inside the households that has all these challenges.
Anyway, I think contrary to
this case that is actually in Cambodia, thank you.
In Bolivia we were able to deal with human capital,
with the fact that organizations are already
organized and they have
all these structures that pays people.
But still, what remains for
us is an issues
that we need to analyze what's
going on inside the households.
Thank you. [APPLAUSE]
Thank you for making the trip
here to [inaudible] international speakers.
Also, thank you for integrating in the talk
the strategies that were being [inaudible].
I'm going to introduce our next panelists,
his name is Dr. Luke Juran.
He is a colleague of mine.
He's an assistant professor
in the Department of Geography and
has an appointment in
the Virginia Water Resources Research Center.
I believe when he came here,
he was one of our first-line
supervisors as we're trying to
integrate knowledge and understanding great disciplines,
and he was one of our partners who came in to do that.
His research focuses on
human interactions with water resources,
human interactions with disaster processes,
and human interactions with a couple
of important disaster constructs.
In particular, his research
examines general access to drinking water,
toilet sanitation infrastructure, and
how disaster impact women and men differently.
I think about the faculty,
we probably has about 2,000 faculty that was here.
I believe we really need to worry about
the water and sanitation in developing communities.
You have it here on the stage [LAUGHTER] ,
so welcome.
[APPLAUSE]
[NOISE]
Welcome to Blacksburg for anyone who's out of town.
It's nice to have a large audience.
I know you're not going to see me or at
least shouldn't be [LAUGHTER] here to see me
but I'm still going to take this as flattery
and it's really good to get a lot of out
of towners here and to show off our university and town.
I'm just trying to mess with this.
There we go, so this is about
water and gender and disaster in gender in South Asia.
Define South Asia here as primarily India and Bangladesh,
which is where most of my field work is but
also Nepal and Sri Lanka to a lesser extent.
In terms of context, South Asia,
as you would likely know,
is a setting that struggles with gender across
basically all spheres whether it's legal, education,
in the household, in markets,
in terms of systematic procedural issues.
You can see them in terms of female infanticide and
the list goes on.
Menstrual hygiene management is actually
becoming quite a trendy topic in India and
South Asia but
all these issues which I've just
raised scratch the surface,
these gender vulnerabilities or gender roles or
gender expectations carry over
to the environmental sphere as well.
I don't need to talk about
agriculture and food because we have
so many experts on that
[inaudible] I can say it really isn't,
it's women who have to gather the wood,
who have to find biomass,
who have to make charcoal,
buy charcoal and that takes
time just like getting water and not only that,
it exposes them in terms of indoor
air pollution and cooking it
to lots of health disparities,
disproportionate levels of
acute respiratory infection, cataracts,
higher sensitivity to TB,
asthma, all these sorts of
things that go along with that.
Water, I'm going to talk
about next and we're just going to deep our toes
in that because I think that's a pretty well known topic,
now move on we need to focus
on the [inaudible] to something,
a little less novel at least like water.
As just a basis and because I will bring
up a male, female binary later,
I'm grounding this in
my partner [inaudible] and ecological feminism.
Eco-Feminism basically that parallels
exist between how society
treats the environment as
something to exploit to objectify,
to turn into capital,
to conquer and there's
parallels between also how society treats women,
has expectations of them,
has roles to them,
[NOISE] objectifies them, stuff like that.
You can see this in lots of male, female binaries,
which also correspond with man nature binaries with
man being both separate from nature and also above it,
you can see that in a lot of male, female,
and women binaries where men and
women are different instead of being the
same or all equal human better deserving of
equal treatment and you can see that in terms
of men are strong,
women are weak, men are rational, women are emotional.
Look at our last election,
if you speak with
conviction and assertiveness and a lot of voice,
you're resolute and you're
a good leader and you are strong.
If you do that as a woman,
you're a chilly bitch, frankly, my bad.
These things carry over
to the environment so I'll look at that.
First off, in terms of water I think
we know this [inaudible] quickly,
but it's retrieved primarily by women and girls,
they're walking long distances,
they're carrying heavy loads leaving
joint pain that's really difficult also when
you're pregnant doing this as often in
flip flops or barefoot.
You could be subject to animal attacks,
like crocodiles and hippos,
this is actually very common more so in Africa.
That's especially when you're going to surface
water sources to gather your water.
Not only that there's often scarce resources.
You're fighting over water,
even though you've got a primary source
doesn't meet all your needs and then you're still
searching for secondary and alternative sources
to make ends meet and of
course you have all of the loss
of other things you keep doing at that time.
Whether it's school or employment or
just enjoying your life and having leisure time.
In addition to that, once the water gets to the home,
the work is not over.
They're also in charge of storing
the water, serving the water,
treating the water if
treatment is occurring and that's often done through
boiling which is going to expose
them to indoor air pollution even if it's done
outside it's still called
indoor air pollution it's because you're so
close to it and breathing it in.
Then they're the ones who have to manage it,
cook with it, being with it,
do laundry with it, and often go
without it when the family doesn't have enough.
Now this also exposes them
disproportionately to waterborne illnesses because
they're interacting with the water more often as well
[inaudible] to surface water sources
or as you'll see in some of
my pictures interacting with the water
so women also have many health issues
related to water and given all this whole context,
this is why Integrated Water Resources Management
as a framework calls out and supports
principles that women must be
involved in water management because
since they have such an
intricate relationship with water,
since they're the ones who have to deal with the decision
or policies of water,
and since they have a disproportionate,
larger amount of knowledge
of water because you have to do all this,
they need to have a place at
the table when it comes to managing water,
be it at the watershed level,
city level, community level, whatever.
I'll just show you pictures from my field.
Primarily when researching [inaudible]
but in other places as
well such as in the Southeastern tip of India
but water comes for one hour day.
You're carrying these jugs of water,
each one weighs about 40 pounds,
you're carrying two at a time with
flip-flops or barefoot,
you're still aren't getting enough,
then you still have other secondary
and tertiary resources to meet your needs.
Here you're seeing interaction with
surface waters that are highly polluted,
which can lead to more waterborne illnesses just from
interacting with it as well as
[inaudible] paying for water,
finding water, children gathering water,
storing water, all of those sorts of things.
That pretty much what I study at a community level in India.
I want to move on to disasters because I
think this is a little bit perhaps lesser known in
this this conference and there's actually
a huge field of gender and disaster,
there's a gender and disaster network,
gender and disaster conferences,
the UN gets into this and all sorts of things.
Basically, it has been
proven that on average so not across
every disaster and not
every time in every event but on the average,
women are more likely to die
from the impacts of disasters compared to
men and they're more
likely to suffer secondary [NOISE] effects of disasters,
in terms of morbidity as well as
mortality in the aftermath of disasters.
So basically, women are more likely to
die from the initial forces of disaster,
base health issues and also potentially
die after the disaster not from the initial effects.
Now this is coming from,
I'll just look at two studies here
because I don't need to belabor the point,
but studied for 22 years,
the 4,605 disasters and 141 countries found this just
by [inaudible] and Cooper in
the annals of the American Association of Geographers.
There's also a meta-analysis done,
by a 108 such aggregated and cohort aggregated studies,
all went together find that
women are more likely to die from disasters
than men and that this is actually a little more
pronounced in developing countries.
It's about al-Assad. I'm just showing
you a few examples here from South Asia,
from Bangladesh, from India,
Sri Lanka, Indonesia is in there as well.
Where disasters are killing one community.
Now, here's a graphic to show for example,
in North Indonesia, 2004 tsunami,
77 percent of deaths females
and only 23 percent were males for example,
this is just a smattering of some of those disasters.
The tsunami, particularly the 2004 tsunami
which killed about 250,000 people.
It's actually unknown in the document,
the official number and you can see that here you have,
one disparity, one death
of a male for every death
of a female so that would be a disparity.
You can see that there were more females
dying everywhere and in
some levels you had
more than two female dying for every one male.
Okay, in the last four are like [inaudible] actually.
It's happening we're going to need more research,
what is going on, right?
First off, it's not an actual reference,
that's where we're going to start because it's
been postulated that it's
sort of a weak and strong known sense but the reason
is just biology, anatomy, and physiology.
This is just a natural thing.
Men on average are faster,
men on average are stronger,
men on average can swim farther
or swim longer or tread water
longer and they weigh more than
women on average and that if you add all these things up,
they're able to run away from disasters faster,
climb up a tree faster,
swim farther away or fight the rushing waters,
not get swept away by heavy winds and all these things,
as well as if women happen to
be pregnant during these things,
their swimming is even more hampered,
their running is even more hampered,
their climbing a tree is even
more hampered and so that just further
disadvantages them and we can all just
wash this away because it's a natural thing.
We can all just go home and say
that these numbers are just natural things.
Obviously that's a flaw in
our thinking and this again perpetuates those men,
women body that I'm talking about.
That men are strong, women are weak,
men are rational, women are
emotional and all these sorts of things, right?
Because that's not the truth.
So if these natural variables are not
the reason why there's
such disproportionate impacts in mortality,
then it must be
some unnatural and socially constructed variables
or factors that are at play.
So what are those variables?
Actually what's going to be is see gents we do that.
We had some issues with this
because my text just keeps blowing
that up and changing for some reason suddenly [LAUGHTER].
The first issue is that the vulnerability that you
see in disasters in terms of enhanced female mortality,
all it is, is
a what's already occurred in the pre-disaster phase.
Women are all ready more vulnerable in
normal society that's already
been socially constructed with a pre-disaster phase,
women have less access to health care on average,
less access to food nutrition,
less access to education,
building, decision-making capacity, income,
ownership of capital, things to fall back on,
a less formal network of banking,
markets, those sorts of things.
Access to public space is right.
In addition to legal, procedural,
justice, political justice, all those things.
So female vulnerability is already the hand that's been
dealt out before the disaster strikes and
all the disaster brings is
making those vulnerabilities visible
and magnifying them and letting
them show themselves, reveal themselves.
So what happens is, already
vulnerability is there disaster occurs,
these pre-disaster older are simply carried over
and magnified and it exacerbated
in extreme chaotic scenarios.
So some women have less knowledge
on the science of disasters and how they
form and when the season is and
I'm not saying that women don't know these things,
I'm just saying on average,
there's this disadvantage in terms of education,
in terms of public space experience,
in terms of going into government buildings and
know where to get the form or know where to
get the cheap or having
a government ID and all these things they don't have.
When you don't have those things and you have
100 ability to go run for safety because
you won't have the ability and you have [inaudible] to
make a decision to save your life or your family's life,
those things all put you at
a disadvantage and those are all things that already
occurred and you're just now in
a life or death scenario with these things.
On top of that,
you have women running
other household acting on gender roles,
I have to carry infants,
I have to hold children's hands,
I have to help the elderly out and
also do all of these things at the same time.
So when you put these together, enhance female mortality.
You can see here this is actually in rural Bangladesh.
Crude difference so I looked at 35,
39 cohort year, so already the top line is females,
that's like a hollow circle and then
the bottom line is the solid circle, is male deaths.
So already you see something unnatural
because women have a higher death rate here,
than men which is not natural when you
let society play out.
That's why women typically have longer life expectancy
than men whether their up
two years depending on the place.
All ready there's a discrepancy that you can
see and that's the normal vulnerability
that I'm saying poverty existences aside in this case
Bangladesh and then the disaster happens.
That's the same cohort and death rates from
the disaster and those are all
female deaths and those are the male deaths.
You can see there was a discrepancy in
all that happened during the disaster.
It got magnified, so now we you're at the disaster.
I said there's also enhanced chances
or morbidity and mortality for women after disasters.
Basically you still have all those vulnerabilities
continuing into the post-disaster phase,
less knowledge on where to seek aid
and health resources deny
the access because you're not that a powerful you
heard some of that from some things yesterday.
You have less income and
capital and sorts of things before the disaster
so they probably have the capacity to
the disaster and the resilience to bounce back and
we have less capital and
[NOISE] ownership of things to bounce back from,
to bounce back with, less female doctors to address
feminine health issues that exist in these scenarios,
unique health issues of women,
sexual violence, abuse, partly due to
increased of alcoholism of men after
disasters is a big issue
that further disadvantages women,
single headed households are
especially vulnerable in terms of getting
paid and just often having
one income to help deal with this scenario.
However, most single headed households are female
headed so in the end there mostly a disadvantage
in those situations.
Sometimes when their husband dies,
their house or their land or capital are
seized by their in laws [inaudible]
and as far as
being coerced into things like prostitution.
[NOISE]
That's good. In person,
really, exploitative position, for example,
being pushed into marriage
because we're in a tough situation,
it's good to say you forgive
your father because they're not
contributing money to your household,
but instead if you go to the male household,
all these things come into play.
[NOISE] Now the issue is after the disaster,
[NOISE] we have a changed society.
So everything basically is going to happen again.
It's reified actually,
a disaster which is in institutions.
So disaster management institutions lack
women's perspectives overall because they're
managed by government officials, civil defense,
the military, engineers, urban planners, physicians,
and these are all male-dominated fields
and so women's voices are
not heard and basically
the situation keeps getting reified.
It's a pitiful cycle that we need to change.
So my conclusions on this are basically,
women are more vulnerable than men to disasters,
but this is not a natural thing,
this is not due to sex,
but instead gender and societal organization
and it's a [NOISE] product
of egocentric societies that women have capacity,
they have resilience, but
egocentric societies are suppressing
their ability to act upon this.
It's not that they're vulnerable people,
it's that we are making them vulnerable.
On average, women die and experience
more morbidity than men,
and what's happening is that pre-disaster vulnerabilities
are merely being carried over to
the disaster and post-disaster scenarios and being
magnified and then disaster management agencies,
essentially reify this status quo,
are not gender mainstreaming,
although this is going on better at
the United Nations of International
Strategy for Disaster Reduction
that some other places that feel for anyone.
The second one, [inaudible] framework.
They're also addressing these sorts of things.
But the issue is,
since these are all social problem,
I want to end on something positive and
these are human constructed problems,
so that means we can solve them.
They're not natural problems,
we made them, so we can solve them,
although it's like solving poverty,
pretty difficult, but we can
do it and we should have some hope.
I just wanted to end on this conferences.
I was asked to focus on out of theory into the field.
So I want to think about what can we do
as researchers in the field or as academics,
while working at non-profits,
or at USAID or whatever?
Some of these things we've already been talking about.
One is, I'm working with
disaster scenarios and people with some health issues,
don't stigmatize, co-create effectively.
Someone was just talking about
things like less technology,
we don't need prototypical,
technocratic engineering approaches to
plop down upon the foreign landscape and solve problems.
We need more simple, long-term,
sustainable solutions that can be activated over
the long term to
solve on the ground problems for real people.
This can really only be done by monitored partnerships,
and I don't call these interventions,
I call them partnerships.
We need to focus on community capacity building
and resilience building,
but that only works if you allow
for agency and facilitate agency,
otherwise you're not able to capitalize on
that building of your cultural and community capital.
I think we need to better communicate
our science to the public and the governments.
So we actually here at Virginia Tech
now require that all grad students
have to write a general abstract,
plenty of other universities do this.
We have to write a scientific abstract,
masters and PhD students [NOISE], a general abstract.
We're starting to move towards
getting this out to the people.
Now the problem is, the general abstract still
reads like a very scientific abstract,
so we are actually quite bad at this,
[LAUGHTER] but it's still not
working and that's why I challenge you,
in terms of what can you do.
So after this conference,
we need to get out of the conference and
[inaudible] Virginia and get it into
society and spread these things around.
Yes. That's my thought.
Thank you very much. [APPLAUSE]
Thank you. So, we have about 20 minutes on questions.
I already see hands up,
I want to ask my client to
answer a few questions [inaudible] [NOISE].
Hello. I'm from the University of Florida.
Thank you for your participation
and I have two questions.
One is for Dr. Jimenez, I wanted
to ask you how to deal with commodities,
these products that are
useful for the locals and then they become so popular
that the demand increases
[NOISE] [inaudible] and now it's not
available for
local consumption because it is so expensive.
My second question is for the for Dr. Luke.
Usually families that are poor,
very low income families tend to
migrate to these [inaudible].
What's the best way to help educate middle aged people?
[BACKGROUND]
Hi, I'm Amanda Rumba, University of California Davis.
This question is for Dr. Jimenez.
I've been watching the Virgo numerical washed Hillary.
As you know, she's at the University of Mexico,
she studies was on South Western Bolivia,
and what I find interesting about her work is looking
at income that's gone up, [NOISE],
she's seen rise in equality
and decrease in conflicts among community members and
she loves to talk about that in
indigenous and non indigenous [inaudible]. Thank you.
Thank you for the questions. [inaudible]
When [inaudible] obviously the demand for
[inaudible] worldwide.
All over a sudden
apparently and because it's so expensive,
there is no available anymore
for the producers [inaudible].
This issue, we have
talk about this issue and we were very interested,
actually to look at it closely in order to see if in fact
this [inaudible] they have personally [inaudible] Why?
Because to start with [inaudible] was not very good
[inaudible] it was not to consume.
It was largely consumed
by the producers so this [inaudible]
for their own consumption.
[NOISE] There was normally a large
[inaudible] because it was important.
It was associated with [inaudible].
So this is showing statuses [inaudible] the middle class.
So what has happened now is very [inaudible].
There are two ways we see
things like you can go to some restaurants.
In urban restaurants [inaudible]
because all of a sudden [inaudible]
maybe at
the same [inaudible] ,
particularly, you can [inaudible] right?
That's one thing. The other thing is that
little policies dealing with the fact that
[inaudible]
associates and putting
them into these packages
that are [inaudible] for a pregnant woman,
breakfast for children [inaudible]
so it's mandatory now that this has to be there.
In fact, one-third of last year production
[inaudible] so this is part of the [inaudible].
Of course, [inaudible] wonderfully
because all of a sudden you find in
a marketplace that [inaudible] is being sold by
[inaudible] people who are getting these
rather than sell it [inaudible].
So we're still a process of change and I
think it will take awhile.
But the last thing I'd like to say,
because this is a very important issue is,
what it means to the producers themselves.
Yes, it has given them
the opportunity to expand production to
[inaudible] associations to start
thinking about transformation and [inaudible] to cookies,
cakes [inaudible] are being
produced and they are trying to
figure out how they add value.
Overall if you [inaudible] and I think,
that each of those habits [inaudible].
I think the issue here
considering that we're dealing with a [inaudible]
where countries such as China [inaudible] so what we do,
and I think we should ensure,
because if I can
[inaudible] including Bolivian consumer product,
but also US consumers and Europe [inaudible].
In this globalized market,
we also have [inaudible] and I may show you
the pictures because I wanted
you to see the type of producers we're talking about;
small-scale producers both at
family level and where
in ecological sustainability is very costly.
So I think as consumers,
we encourage certain type of
production and pay the price that it may
take for sustainable practices production.
This is very different from Peru,
for instance, who [inaudible] teamwork,
but in several regions [inaudible] basically,
these are like big entrepreneur [inaudible].
I'm not sure how [inaudible] in China,
but I think as for consumers in a globalized society,
in a globalized market,
we can also make a difference in terms
of the influence your trends of production
and keeping that [inaudible] producers that will do it in
a sustainable way, because its [inaudible].
I think rather than focusing in
the completely negative implications,
which are there [inaudible]
as you say that the [inaudible] has become
the [inaudible] I think the [inaudible] associated with
production that can [inaudible].
Going to the issue of inequality and
[inaudible] not all of them are
producing sustainable in a sustainable way.
I had to show you that, because the
[inaudible] that's what you're
going to get high prices [inaudible].
So sustainability is costly because [inaudible].
You have to have [inaudible] in terms of
how many hectares you're
producing [inaudible] want to make sure
that [inaudible] and so it costs more.
But I think even the [inaudible] recognize these,
then they'll be good [inaudible] and it's true.
There are some groups that have become
more [inaudible] some families buy a tractor,
they start renting the tractor [inaudible].
But what we have found there is that you see
this psychologists where there is [inaudible].
There were some people who
just returned to the communities because
they have [inaudible] don't care.
Get a tractor and [inaudible]
as much as possible and they [inaudible]
who are more attached to the land
and who don't have the many opportunities
[inaudible] they are big team [inaudible] they seem to be
more [inaudible] land use about sustainability and
about what's happening [inaudible].
Again, I think they have a
[inaudible] and I think it's to
collective action through associations
making sure that [inaudible] big markets,
that we can achieve
[inaudible].
Yeah. The issue someone asked about
basically resettlement and how to do that effectively.
I will be honest and say I cannot grow resettlement,
and I think that resettlement should be as a last resort.
There are issues like you said of
land tenure with livelihood,
I also realize that.
Marginalized peoples are pushed into hazardous areas.
It's an environment of injustice,
right? It's not their fault.
But also, there's livelihood issues,
these people live on
the coast because they want to go fishing and
that's their livelihood and that's
their history, that's what they do.
River valleys are very fertile places to grow,
so there's reasons to be there.
I'm not for all these settlements
unless [NOISE] it's the absolute last resort.
I can quote Emeritus anthropologists
from the University of Florida,
Anthony Tony Oliver-Smith, and he says,
"When you ask communities,
do you want to face another ecological hazard
or the social hazard of re-locating,
they often choose to face
future ecological hazards in
the same place because they've dealt with those before,
they know what to expect and the social hazard of
moving is so foreign and uncertain
and unknown that that's
actually often more detrimental to them.
That's one viewpoint, I tend
to prescribe to that viewpoint.
Now that being said, resettlement,
there's reasons for it and it needs to be done.
Certainly, when there are environmental injustices,
people would be good to move those.
How do you do that? That's the issue,
and people have been working on this for a long time.
Most resettlement projects fail,
[NOISE] frankly, most of them fail.
[NOISE] The whole place gets abandoned,
or they're only halfway populated.
Services don't reach them and
[NOISE] they go back to their original site.
Or they go somewhere else or they just disperse
and it leads to community disarticulation,
loss of community capital,
loss of kinship networks,
all these sorts of things.
There's a couple of miles up there,
ones like Cobern, Lesley, and Tapin.
They say you're going to resettle someone,
[NOISE] first off, it's a last resort.
Second, resettle them as close as possible to
the original site in
a similar landscape as the original site.
Make sure they have access to water,
and whatever you're housing them in,
it should be non culturally alien.
Don't give them concrete houses
and nuclear houses if this is
a place that has larger families and mixed families,
if they're used to thatched housings and
houses that breathe or
houses that can let air in and out,
because it just doesn't work.
Another person I've looked at is Michael Cernea,
he was a sociologist at
the World Bank for at least two decades.
He looked at projects all over
the world that involved resettlement.
He has this thing called an impoverishment
risks reconstruction model, IRR.
He says, he agrees a lot with the covert.
Don't necessarily move them unless you have to,
try to make it similar to the old site,
closer the old site.
He gets into things like make
sure you should guarantee land term,
they should not be moving into an insecure situation.
Make sure there are jobs and
livelihood opportunities in the new place,
and ensure there's access to water.
Make sure there's security in
this new place and make sure you somehow can
keep the community articulated
and together so they can be cohesive.
You just don't resettle people and leave,
you need to have a long-term plan.
The long-term plan is that often there's a dip
after a disaster that
you need to get them back to where they were,
hopefully raise them, and then stay with them.
The goal being that the next generation,
that's their new place and
that's the place they see as home.
But to do all that, you need to work hard.
I don't know how to do those things well,
but those are what a lot of people say,
the things that I described to you.
So we have time for maybe a couple more questions.
At the back, there's a lot of hands waving.
You've got four minutes,
I'm trying to save on time,
so be very efficient.
Hi. My name is Kate and I'm
a Public Health student at The University of Florida.
My question is more of a statement
in response to Dr. Juran?
Juran.
Yeah.
Part of this is only because I recently
read [inaudible] disaster piece,
and while I agree that
women have very specific and very urgent health issues
around disasters, that those health issues are excluded to
the issues that men face also.
Two of the points that you brought up that
really motivated me in
saying this is that in the context of
India's specific cast means that not
only our women's voice is limited but
also those low cast modern like men,
their voices are not going to be considered also within
the policies of development disasters.
That was one aspect. The second was related to
the point that you brought about partner violence,
that that rate increases after a disaster,
men tend to be more violent towards their wives.
That's also very common of what's happening among men,
and I just need you to talk a little bit about it.
Yeah, that's great. I appreciate this.
I usually give an hour lecture and I end
all on men and disaster and I say,
"Men have their own issues."
This is a new field, there's a book out.
[inaudible] is one author there.
She asked me to write a chapter
there but I declined because I'm not
an expert on men and disasters and I had no data.
Actually, first off, gender and
disasters is actually a broader literature.
It started with gender, which was women,
then it got into gender and LGBTQ and intersex.
But then it got to all vulnerable populations,
went back to the subaltern,
differently-abled and the elderly.
Then now it's looking at there's
gender dimensions of disasters.
One of the issues, for example,
they're the ones who have to disproportionately
respond to disasters,
they're the ones that perceive the distraction,
pick up dead bodies, bury dead bodies,
see blood, take even loved ones
out of the rebel they know,
then go home and not cry because I'm a man
and [inaudible] and that's not good for them.
They have gender roles,
I'm not saying to do this, but they feel like,
"I've got to protect my family,
I've got to protect my home.
I lost my job and I can't work,
now I'm not the breadwinner anymore
for my family and I feel bad.
How am I going to pay back the loans we have and I'm
the only one who has to pay for all these things."
Anyway, they had a lot of issues
themselves and I do this in my talk,
and I bring all of that up.
I agree with you fully that
men have their own gender issues.
Some of them are gender roles expected of them,
often by themselves though that they
have to be the breadwinner and they have to be strong,
they can't cry, they can't show
emotions and all these sorts
of things which we have to let go.
So I fully agree with that and
there's texts on that and I
could give you my full lecture which has
several slides dedicated to that,
including the links to that book.
Then all I'll say about this cast, yes,
I just picked on gender as one topic,
and so yes, it looks at all vulnerable populations.
I think marginalized population do prove cast.
There's a whole vulnerability calculus,
gender is one component,
income's another, social location's another,
age is another, race,
ethnicity, all of these sorts of things are
spokes in the vulnerability wheel of calculus,
and I just looked gender and I didn't mean
to take on anything else I've listed at that time.
Okay. Maybe take one more question in the back.
I look basically at the time,
we're going to take one more.
My question is also for Dr. Juran.
A lot of your research is reminding me of genocide and
the limitations that the US took
post Bosnia and post Rwanda,
and including women in the tribunals and
including them in the transform of their society
to have those matching in
their gender roles with the men
in their society to be implemented in government.
My question to you is,
how do you create a generalizable system
or even just a foundation in implementation about
disaster relief that is opted by
engineers and urban planners who might
not be as familiar with this kind of work or policy?
What kind of person do
you want to see in those kinds of roles,
that be a social scientist or
engineer also has a background in this.
What would be beneficial?
Thirty seconds to answer. I'll begin by saying
that's a really difficult question,
and there is a cluster model
of trying to organize all the NGOs.
In major disaster, we have local NGOs,
national NGOs, government response teams,
international teams, super national
entities all walking in.
They're stepping on each other's toes, they're silos.
The one issue was having a cluster method and having NGO
coordination resource center where
all the NGOs at the end of
the week had to share what activities they're doing.
Where they work, there are people not getting aid,
and not over providing
aid to certain parts of the country and things like that.
What was the other question? I'm sorry,
I lost the rest of that.
Thing is disasters are chaos, right?
There's always going to be
some people who fall through the cracks and I
think that you need a disciplinary team.
It's an issue of at beginning,
you need doctors, you
need rebels to save lives, water, food.
As it moves on,
you need the engineers to be building things,
infrastructure that needs to be
informed by social scientists in nature that
built environment is overlaid on
the social cultural environment
in a way that they can live in harmony.
When it's just an engineer doing that and doesn't work.
Maybe it's just a social scientist
doing that, they can't build a road.
So you need a team, right?
But you move from immediate response,
which is really about this kind of objective.
Save all the lives you can, bring in food,
bring in water, help people,
help everyone you can to get to where ever you can.
Then you'll move into
the things that feel a little more fluid,
then you can either get your interdisciplinary teams to
address all of the different issues and
the diverse needs of the people.
Because they don't just need water,
food, they need housing, they need a job,
they need so many different things that
to me it means we need to address all those needs,
and that takes a team.
Well, I think that's [inaudible] thank our panelists.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you again to Dr. Jiminez,
Dr. Juran, and Dr. Hall.