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Gender Equality & Disaster Risk Reduction > Proceedings > Executive Summary

Executive Summary

From the 10th – 12th of August 2004, almost one hundred participants from twenty-eight countries gathered in Honolulu for the international Gender Equality and Disaster Risk Reduction Workshop hosted by the University of Hawaii Social Science Research Institute and the East-West Center (www.ssri.hawaii.edu/research/GDWwebsite). Disaster risk managers, policy makers, development and gender specialists, emergency managers, humanitarian relief workers, academics, activists, and community members from around the world came together to strategize about moving from talk to action by incorporating gender equality in disaster risk reduction strategies. The workshop provided a forum for learning about gender and disaster connections from differing perspectives. Participants traveled vast distances to share their knowledge, experience, and insight.

With generous support from workshop sponsors, including the US Agency for International Development (USAID) Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA), the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), the National Science Foundation (NSF), UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR), the Gender and Disaster Network, the East-West Center/Pacific Disaster Center (PDC), the Center of Excellence in Disaster Management and Humanitarian Assistance (COE-DMHA), the Public Entity Risk Institute, and several local organizations, we were able to increase the size and reach of workshop from the previous USAID-sponsored international workshop held in Miami in 2000 (See “Background” folder, “Reaching Women and Children in Disaster”). Workshop sponsors provided travel subsidies and support for sixty-eight participants. Even though we were unable to fund more than fifty requests from qualified, knowledgeable people, the tremendous increase in interest demonstrated that gender issues in disaster reduction have become more prominent.

Designed to promote interaction and dialogue, the three-day workshop focused primarily on developing implementation strategies and actions in working group sessions. Three plenary panels provided examples to initiate dialogue and stimulate further discussion. In addition to the poster displays and resource tables, flexible lunch sessions allowed time for presentations for participants to share their experiences in the field. The scheduling flexibility further permitted two important additional sessions to be added to the agenda: 1) a time for dedicating the Mary Fran Meyers Award to Madhavi Malalgoda Ariyabandu for her efforts in gender and disaster risk reduction work in South Asia and 2) an impromptu meeting of the male participants who decided to develop an advocacy statement on their roles and responsibilities in gender and disaster risk reduction. In addition to the more formal workshop structure, a cultural presentation during the first evening’s reception added an opportunity to consider natural hazards from a cultural perspective through hula kahiko, an ancient style hula performance.

The workshop participants proposed actions related to six specific themes, as well as a series of general recommendations for ensuring that actions become implemented in international, regional, national, and local disaster risk management agendas. An online coordinating group began looking at the workshop recommendations to: craft a Call to Action for participants, their agencies, and the broader disaster risk reduction community; develop a Platform for action to be presented in Kobe, Japan at the World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in January 2005; and, provide recommendations for a group that would actively review the status of gender mainstreaming risk reduction strategies. In addition, the workshop became the impetus for a following activity to develop a Gender and Disaster Sourcebook that provides case studies and examples of best practices.

Workshop participants proposed overarching recommendations to increase gender mainstreaming and incorporate gender-fair practices in disaster risk management in international and national programs, including actions to:

Incorporate gender and risk reduction analysis as a compulsory element for all development projects.
Ensure that dynamics of disaster risk, gender, and environmental analyses are considered in an integrated manner.
Highlight gaps in millennium development goals in terms of disaster risk reduction and gender.
Guarantee representation of grassroots and wider civil society organizations by providing resources and access to information.

Participants of the Gender Equality and Disaster Risk Reduction Workshop, Honolulu 2004, recognized that we all have spheres of influence and varying expertise. Women and men both acknowledged and advocated their specific roles in ensuring gender equality. In an effort to pursue disaster risk reduction in activities, participants agreed to:

Review the proposals and policies in disaster management and incorporate gender as an integral part of policies and programs (including the continuous and critical review of documents leading to Kobe ‘s discussions and the resultant documents from the World Conference on Disaster Reduction).
Take core message of this conference and suggested action points to respective organizations.
Build alliances and coalitions or work with existing coalitions to promote and build regional, national, international subsequently platforms towards influencing Kobe discussions and outcomes.
Form an advocacy and advisory group (among workshop participants) to monitor policy commitments made by our governments and international actors.

The action items that emerged from the workshop build on a substantial foundation of work and the experiences of participants who shared their observations in the working group sessions. This document highlights the developments from the workshop. Discussions and background materials have been included as appendices in folders, since this document will be distributed electronically through CD-ROM and on the internet.

Why Another Workshop?
Background on Gender and Disaster Risk Reduction

In the process of planning the workshop, the conveners asked the practical question, “Why another conference?” It was important to consider this as we asked participants to spend precious time and resources to meet in Honolulu. The disaster risk management community concerned with gender issues has met both formally in a number of workshops and virtually through the Gender and Disaster Network. As the community has grown, it has been essential to interact periodically to build momentum and gain support in taking action towards engendering disaster risk management.

The "decade of disasters" vividly demonstrated that catastrophic social events are gendered and that there is a corresponding need for engendering global approaches to reducing disasters. Because gender relations structure the lives of both women and men, with differences through the life cycle and across cultures, the work of reducing risk cannot fall to men alone. In many parts of the world, women have organized effectively to reduce the risk of natural, human-induced and technological disasters, but these efforts are not well known nor are they integrated into mainstream disaster risk reduction programs. The full and equal participation of women and men is needed to mitigate hazards, reduce social vulnerabilities, and rebuild more sustainable, just, and disaster-resilient communities.

In 2000, the Gender and Disaster Network (see background information and research at http://online.northumbria.ac.uk/geography_research/gdn), with sponsorship from USAID's Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance and the Laboratory for Behavioural Research in the International Hurricane Center at Florida International University, hosted a conference called "Reaching Women and Children in Disaster." Recommendations from the workshop encouraged gender awareness in the development of projects and improved the networking capabilities of participants.

Recommended actions developed from past conferences in Costa Rica, Australia, Canada, Pakistan, and the United States also make the case for increasing gender awareness in disaster risk reduction, as did the Expert Working Group consultation conducted in November 2002 in Ankara, Turkey by the United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women. The results of previous workshops stressed that mainstreaming gender equality is urgently needed, but implementation of even the most basic change strategies in education, policy and practice are lacking in most parts of the world, especially with respect to mitigation and the reduction of social vulnerability.

In fact, with some exceptions, the resolutions and recommendations we come up with are strikingly familiar. We have called for:

an approach to disasters reflecting everything we have learned about gender, development and disaster.
an approach to disasters based on prevention—that is, on reducing structural and social vulnerabilities; mitigating hazardous conditions and events; and preparing as best we can for the extreme events that will surely come.
an approach to hazards, risks and disasters based on gender analysis—so we have the knowledge and history we need when difficult decisions are made about resource management, social planning and living with risk.
an approach to disaster balancing, if you will, structure and agency…that is, an approach based on understanding women’s and men’s very real gendered vulnerabilities, harm and needs, balanced with equal understanding of how women alone and together, and women working with the men in their lives, use their knowledge, leadership, connections, assets, experience, ideas and resources to make life safer, not only at the community level but also in the professions, sciences, and disaster management organizations.
an approach recognizing the diversity of the world’s women and the divisions among us and the complex ways gender relations are interwoven with other forms of social power such as ethnicity, caste and class, age, citizenship, ability, and sexualities.
an approach that does not allow post-disaster reconstruction to rebuild vulnerability but capitalizes on this moment of opportunity to make changes altering the fundamental balance of power between women and men so that women and girls are better able to confront and survive the disastrous events of the future and help others do the same.
and, we have called consistently for an approach to hazards, disasters, and risk that unites women and men in the creation of more just and sustainable and disaster resilient ways of living.

In past meetings, we have identified the need for:

full and equal participation for women in decision-making at all levels and in all phases and sectors.
leadership roles for grassroots women, for example in community-led mitigation projects and gender-sensitive vulnerability assessments and design and reconstruction of housing and social networks and the distribution of relief resources.
governmental and institutional support for capacity building efforts such as non-traditional skills training and leadership development for women.
gender awareness training and curriculum development to promote ‘mainstreaming’ organizationally—and the targets, benchmark, evaluation and monitoring that are the essential ingredient.
research on the root causes of gender-based vulnerability, gender specific data and action research in collaboration with women’s and community groups.
gender-fair practices and policies in the design, implementation and evaluation of disaster projects, from mitigation and preparedness to relief to rehabilitation and reconstruction and back to mitigation.
attention to practices and policies that reduce violence of all kinds against girls and women in disaster contexts and protect and promote women’s and men’s health and well being in gender sensitive ways.
gender-aware early warning systems and engendered awareness, education and training approaches that bridge gaps of culture, literacy, language, and other differences.
media outreach and collaboration to tell a complex story about women and men in disaster.
family friendly and gender fair policies and practices in emergency response work.

The intent of this workshop was to push towards developing strategies for implementing these recommendations. While we understand gender issues better after the past decade of hard-won lessons about women’s disaster vulnerabilities and capacities, gender equality goals have not yet been well integrated at the planning, implementation and evaluation levels in either the private or public sectors of most nations and regions. Opportunities for gender-fair practices and policies are still too often overlooked in community-based risk reduction efforts as they are in government initiatives, and these gaps make a real difference in long-term outcomes. With attention to previous work and recommendations from national and international workshops (background papers available on the website) and develop implementation strategies, this workshop tried to find a place for considering the next steps of implementation.

Gender Equality and Disaster Risk Reduction Workshop
Overview and Discussion Synthesis

Setting the Stage:
BACKGROUND and CHARGE for the WORKSHOP

The workshop opened with formal welcomes and a traditional Hawaiian greeting chant, aloha ‘oli. Dr. Elaine Enarson provided a welcoming address that explained the purpose for the workshop, as described above, and encouraged participants to push themselves over the three days to define concrete actions. (See “Welcoming” file for the full address.)

The charge to participants was to:

compare—and find difference as well as common ground
criticize—and offer alternative ideas
question—question others and be self critical
disagree—and then perhaps agree to disagree and move on
connect—perhaps for lifetime, a decade, definitely for a week

In the months prior to the workshop, participants were asked to provide expectations for the workshop used in shaping the agenda (included in the appendix) and commentaries to better focus discussions and working groups. Participant comments raised the following issues and questions to address in the workshop:

Rethinking the Framework for Gender Equality in Disasters

What does it mean to call for seeing internally displaced families as an asset not a liability? What would it look like? How could we help it come about?
Do “stakeholders” have a gender? What does this mean? How do we engender all actors—and budgets as well?
What changes are needed and in what domains to require that emergency management training include social vulnerability coursework?
Why did women after hurricane Mitch in Nicaragua “choose not to” focus on engendering the disaster agenda? And what are the unanticipated consequences of women focused projects?
How adaptable is the GROOTS model of peer learning and demonstration projects?
From the US, can the newly emerging risk reduction and all-hazards approach survive the massive transfusion of money and political capital to a quite different vision of Homeland Security?

Funding, Budgets, and Project Sustainability

When we call state funding community development such as women’s neighborhood groups, what do we lose—or is government support always necessary?
Are micro-credit loans a burden or an asset to women in crisis?
How sustainable are grant-led projects such as Working with Women at Risk (a vulnerability assessment project several of us in the room worked on in the Caribbean)? Why are some post-Mitch women’s initiatives still on-going? How long will the Women’s Neighborhood Network Project in Ukraine last? What sustains Women for Development in Armenia?

Equality

Are quotas desirable, for instance among community trainers—always? Never? Where and when?
Is providing men with traditionally “female” skills in rehabilitation efforts as important as developing a broader range of skills among women? Why don’t we promote this equally?

Incorporating Gender Policy in Disaster Risk Management

How do we move from a gender policy widely seen as “outside there, and not right here”—safely lodged in headquarters, or an action plan but not operational?
Under what conditions or through what mechanisms can a guild or association of voluntary women working toward preparedness be integrated into local governing bodies?
What can be done at the organizational level to replace the dualist approach of disaster or development—with gender expertise firmly lodged in the ‘development’ camp?

Connections with Complex Emergencies and Global Social Problems

How should we respond to increases in sex work and trafficking in disasters and to intersecting crises such as HIV/AIDS? What connections must we make? Are there any connections to avoid?
How do we connect the issues we see in complex humanitarian emergencies with the planned responses for natural hazards? Are there commonalities that can be learned through risk and vulnerability assessments and social analyses for hazard planning that can be used in developing responses for complex emergencies?
Why do future emergency responders and planners being trained in the US sometimes “refuse to acknowledge the heightened vulnerability of women”? What is not being said or heard? Why do experts in disaster and risk management dispute violence against women in North American disasters and accept it elsewhere?

During the three-day workshop, organizers hoped to realize commitments by individuals and organizations that will reach toward goals of implementing actions defined in the working groups. Future opportunities are considerable because gender is now considered an integrated theme for disaster risk reduction---not just a sidebar issue. The workshop provided opportunities for becoming part of a coordinating group to pose recommendations for the World Conference on Disaster Reduction in 2005 and for contributing ideas, experiences, and resources for the Gender and Disaster Sourcebook.

First Plenary Panel
INSTITUTIONAL and GOVERNMENTAL INITIATIVES

Moderator: Eileen Shea
Speakers: Marion Pratt, US AID Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance; Eugenia Date-Bah, International Labour Organisation; Pete Bradford, Center of Excellence in Disaster Management & Humanitarian Assistance; Claire Reiss, Public Entity Risk Institute; Ed Young, NOAA National Weather Service Pacific Region; Allen Clark, Pacific Disaster Center; Sálvano Briceño, International Strategy for Disaster Reduction
NOTE: Some of the presentations have been included in the presentation folder.

The first plenary panel consisted of representatives of governmental organizations and institutions. Speakers were asked to consider their institutional commitments to gender mainstreaming. The speakers identified several key points on which their institutions agreed.

Gender equity is both an internal and external challenge and opportunity. In order to understand and incorporate a gender perspective in programs and policies, it is important for there to be a good institutional gender balance within the organization to model best practices.
We need to start with the recognition that place, context, and culture matter.
Engendering disaster risk management should be viewed as a process to develop an integrated program of science, technology, dialogue, outreach, and education.
To address disasters through a risk management approach, we have engaged in vulnerability assessments. In these assessments, women and children are often identified as a population at risk because these are populations of greatest poverty with less access to resources. It is important, however, to recognize women and children as assets and to reframe our programs thinking of these populations as opportunities when we incorporate them into policies, plans, and programs.
Development should be linked with disaster risk management on multiple layers, including individual, community, local, institutional, national, and international levels. At each of these levels, it is important to engage and empower individuals, communities, governments, and institutions. Programs should focus on empowerment at levels without forgetting the importance of local knowledge and practice.
To achieve sustained commitment and passion on the part of individuals and institutions requires a shared journey.

Second Plenary Panel and Breakout Discussions
GRASSROOTS INITIATIVES

Moderator: Johdah Bokhari, Women and Water Network (Pakistan)
Speakers: Kelva Perez, USAID, Gender and Water Alliance (Dominican Republic); Ayse Yonder and Suzanne Shende, GROOTS (Turkey and Honduras); Sarah Bradshaw, International Cooperation for Development (Nicaragua); Naomi Weidner, Independent Consultant (Ukraine); Armine Mikayelyan, Women for Development (Armenia)
NOTE: Several of the presentations have been included in the presentation folder or in the resource documents folder.

The second plenary panel consisted of people who work with a variety of grassroots organizations in different nations. They all have extensive experience in dealing with disasters from the perspective of local communities.

The presenters directed participants to think about the relationships among organizations in disaster risk reduction with local communities. Within their presentations, the presenters asked participants to think about the structures, organizations, framework, methods, and tools used in grassroots disaster reduction. Presenters asked:

How do you manage the risk of risk management? In some experiences the organizations and donor agencies have approached relief and risk management in ways that have been detrimental to the communities they intended to help.
What role could women play as communication intermediaries?
Disasters compound social marginalization. NGOs are well positioned to help bridge gaps during and after complex emergencies.
Are women, by nature, more adept at finding solutions in complex emergencies? Are men, in general, prone to violence?
Poverty increases vulnerability, as do social and political systems in transition.
Already have shared experiences, but next step is to build on this.
“Gender Mainstreaming” needs to be done in a way that actually helps women, and not simply advances popular ideas within funding agencies.

Following the plenary presentations, participants disbursed into six working groups formed with mixed sector representation to discuss the issues drawn out from the presentations. The notes of the Second Plenary working groups have been included in the appendix folder, and the following bullets provide an overview of common results from discussions.

What grassroots initiatives are you aware of that may be similar to the experiences discussed by the panel?
1. Community Vulnerability Assessments – Several examples and variations of this method have been used globally. Community vulnerability assessment tools for gender and disaster risk reduction, including a guidebook for community training in assessment methods, have been developed for the Dominican Republic and El Salvador. Bangladesh has used vulnerability analysis in livelihood projects for earthquakes that look at gender and age perceptions. The Cook Islands have developed a Vulnerability and Capacity Analysis that assists communities in identifying and improving capacity to deal with disasters and implement sustainable actions.
2. Gender Training – Gender training incorporated into policies of government help to build governments that respond well to disasters. Examples were provided of training in health systems that personalized gender aspects and international laws such as CEDAW.
3. Community Resource Centers – These centers have been set up in Gujarat to help build resilience to droughts, floods, and earthquakes by providing access to information that can be used for planning. NGOs cooperate to help develop water resources and strengthen local rights and access to resources.
4. Environmental Action and Environmental Justice Groups – These are an important component of reducing vulnerability, but have often been treated separately from disaster management. Where these groups have linked with disaster risk reduction initiatives, the programs have become more sustainable.
5. Participatory Programs – Increased participation of women, community, and stakeholders has helped to create ownership and sustainability of programs while ensuring that groups that are often missed get issues voiced in the process.
6. Women in Leadership Roles and Grassroots Organizations – Programs that work with women’s groups in leadership roles demonstrate that work happens more collaboratively across groups and in the community. Programs that are developed with input into the program work for participants and give a sense of ownership that helps to promote sustainability of initiatives. Women who have formed grassroots organizations in Turkey have demonstrated organizational sustainability in disasters.
7. Student Leadership – Examples from Jakarta, Indonesia demonstrate that students who have organized command posts to deal with flooding and fires have been effective, and have gained community support for their efforts.
8. Microcredit and Microfinance Programs – These programs have been effective in Bangladesh, India, China, and West Africa in helping to provide entrepreneurial opportunities that improve socio-economic conditions for women, and in turn improve their ability to cope with disasters.
9. Women in Infrastructure Development – Women in Mozambique have been taught to build flood-resistant infrastructure (housing, sanitation facilities, etc.) following the floods. The program took advantage of the window of opportunity from the disaster to help build capacity during recovery.
What have been some of the challenges of these initiatives in your organization/country/community that will prevent implementation of strategies?
1. Capacity and Confidence Building – Examples from the Community Vulnerability Assessment Guidebook showed that women had to learn that they had knowledge that would contribute to vulnerability reduction.
2. Community Focus of Programs Needed – Programs for risk reduction have often focused on improving individual rights, property rights, and land use issues that create competition rather than collaboration and these programs do not help to build and sustain communities. Opportunities to develop community-focused programs would ensure cooperation in communities and build resiliency.
3. Understand Traditional Roles and Use Appropriate Methods – Before adopting gender mainstreaming initiatives, it is important to understand traditional gender roles to prevent alienating men in risk reduction.
4. Understand and Balance Roles of Insider/Outsider Experts – There are different situations where trust prevents outsiders from gathering information through surveys and other situations where outsiders are favored as experts. The experts need to be cognizant of these perceptions and understand when local “insider” experts would be more effective than “outsiders.” Balance needs to occur on international to local levels, as well.
5. Gender Balance and Strategic Alliances – Men and women both need to be part of disaster risk reduction strategies. It is a challenge to involve men in gender equality discussions, but men are prominent in disaster management organizations. Women need to be included, heard, and respected in these organizations. Resources should be balanced to target areas where men and women work best.
6. Class Divisions that Cross-Cut Gender – Class divisions are cross-cutting in society, but can be limiting because in some situations people, even of the same gender, are not allowed to interact in meetings. This provides a challenge for NGOs to be cognizant of their roles in helping to provide voice to weaker classes and balance needs in society.
7. Status of NGOs in National and International Government Frameworks – There is concern that many governments do not take the non-governmental organizations seriously and successes will be limited to the influence of the organizations in society.
8. Wasted Resources – When government and organizations do not collaborate, there are redundant activities that waste resources and minimize extent of influence in taking action. Competition for limited resources often defeats the intent of the programs, where time is wasted in competition rather than taking action. The opportunity to collaborate can help to maximize resources.
9. Cultural Differences and Separations – A range of factors may prevent project implementation, including cultural differences. These need to be understood before trying to implement programs. In many societies, women and men are separated. Religious communities are often separated. Including voices and widespread viewpoints become more complicated when groups cannot work together because of social, cultural, and traditional rules.
10. Credibility and Trust – These become obstacles to implementation if the communities and organizations do not have good experiences. These must be built over time.
What opportunities might you use to build gender sensitive tools and implement gender fair practices at the grassroots and community levels?
1. Pre-Disaster Planning Opportunities – Poverty alleviation programs can be used to reduce vulnerability and risk. Promote economic equality.
2. Increase Numbers of Girls in Science and Technology – Target girls in science and math programs. Target the teachers to encourage and mentor girls in science. Develop tools and curriculum for K-12.
3. Introduce Gender-Sensitive Tools – Look at traditional cultural events and roles and find intersections with disaster risk management to use in translating risk reduction opportunities.
4. Use Windows of Opportunity after Disasters – As recovery operations occur, there are opportunities to involve community in recovery efforts, increase capacity, translate skills and develop appropriate tools, improve infrastructure, and reduce risks.
What type of support or tools will be required?
1. Funding – Risk reduction activities require sustainable funding resources to afford staff and implement projects.
2. Networks – Networks can help integrate skills and resources and influence decision making authorities.
3. Time – Long-term social changes require time to develop.
4. Training – Training is needed at all levels (in communities, with policy and decision makers, with media) and in different areas (gender sensitivity, cultural sensitivity, and mitigation planning).
5. Internal Resources – Strengthening the communities from within will make them more resilient to disasters. These need to be planned and developed prior to disasters.
6. Communication Systems – Communication pathways are needed among local governmental and nongovernmental organizations to the national and regional governments. Communications tools need to be aware of language and interpretation by communities.
7. Economic Opportunities for Women – Economic opportunities and support is needed for women to strengthen communities and build resilience.
What would be a good measure of effectiveness?
1. Ownership – communities take programs and projects and implementation is continuous.
2. Sustainability – Mechanisms have been developed to sustain the programs beyond initial funding so that the programs become routine and part of the culture. The programs survive even with the loss of key individuals who started the group.
3. Transportability, Transferability, and Integration – Programs that can be used to address multiple issues and link to pre-existing programs would be more effective.
4. Partnership – Programs that become collaborative and connect groups from communities at local levels to upper levels of government and decision making. Equality and trust in the partnerships are important to maintaining and sustaining the program

Third Plenary Panel
PROMOTING GENDER EQUALITY in DISASTER RISK REDUCTION – STRATEGIES CURRENTLY in PLACE

Moderator: Susan Cutter, Hazards Research Lab University of South Carolina
Speakers: Prafulla Mishra, Oxfam India; Mary Hope Schwoebel, Independent Consultant, USA; Alice Kirambi, Christian Partners Development Agency, Nairobi, Kenya; Maureen Fordham, Northumbria University, UK; Mehul Pandya, Disaster Management Institute, India
NOTE: Several presentations have been included in the “Presentation” folder as available.

The intent of the third plenary panel discussion was to identify specific initiatives and strategies that have demonstrated success for integrating gender equality in disaster management and risk reduction. The speakers were chosen for the range of geographical experiences and for the programs they have initiated.

In working with mainstreaming gender in disaster reduction, Prafulla Mishra described the immense sociocultural barriers and high level of poverty. In order to develop positive action, Oxfam began to incorporate a gender perspective throughout the disaster management cycle. Gender analysis was incorporated into plans and implemented through village task forces or management committees. Oxfam recognizes that disasters provide excellent opportunities for learning in order to improve future policies and programs.

Mary Hope Schwoebel had experience conducting macro and micro level assessments for the India Government funded by USAID. As she related the experiences to the Call for Action that will be emerging from the workshop, she reminded participants to focus on the macro level initiatives. It is important to get gender on the disaster agenda so that the broader disaster risk management community recognizes the impacts and effects of gender mainstreaming. It is also critical to continue to include disasters as part of the development portfolio. Another important point to recognize is that India has tremendous gender expertise, and these experts can be trained to work in the disaster management sector.

From her experience working at multiple levels in Kenya, Alice Kirambi advocated that women be better mobilized in disaster management. Women have not been incorporated into policies. Women’s visibility needed to be raised at local levels to develop gender-based disaster management. A case study in Kenya has involved women in disaster management with positive results in improving capacity to cope with disasters.

Maureen Fordham presented a gender perspective of the Millenium Development Goals (MDG) (www.un.org/milleniumgoals/). It is an important advance that gender equality has been recognized in the MDG. Since gender is a cross-cutting issue, there are goals that could be improved by including gender considerations. The Millenium Development Goals should be considered in linking gender with disaster risk reduction and development policy.

The Disaster Management Institute (DMI) in Gujarat, India has developed the Jeevika Project, a long-term livelihood project, that considers that women are more often affected by disasters, but women are creative and active in trying to cope with disasters. Mehul Pandya described the project and provided an overview of DMI’s commitment for gender equality in disaster risk management.

During the ensuing question and answer period, the following comments were highlighted:

Women are part of the problem and the solution.
We need to first understand knowledge in communities to engender disaster risk management organizations.
We need to focus on positive targeting, not equality as the issue.
Mitigation is slow. We have lots of good recommendations from meetings, but we do not often see results very quickly. The strategies that are developed are beautiful, but the frustration is the lack of implementation.
Despite progress on initiatives, there is a large constraint: We don’t have gender-sensitive decision makers. The problem with moving quickly is that the power and organizational structures do not support this.
We need to see more accountability for implementing actions. We need to see progress. Benchmarks should be set for monitoring gender mainstreaming initiatives.
It is possible to have the larger community respond to and discuss implementation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) and create positive action towards implementation by identifying ways that these goals work with local objectives. (Example: The Cook Islands released a discussion of MDG in the paper in the local language and information was widely disseminated, and this has helped push towards implementation.)

Concurrent Facilitated Working Groups
STRATEGIES NEEDED and POSSIBLE

Concurrent working groups met for three hours on the second day of the workshop and then reconvened on the third day to prepare the action items presented in this section. The detailed notes for each of the groups appear in the “Working Group” folder. The following section briefly reviews the lists of actions recommended by each of the working groups.

Building Capacity in Women’s and Community Groups

Team Leaders: Madhavi Ariyabandou and Ngo Cong Chinh
Facilitator: Sara Ahmed
Recorder: Marieme Lo
Participants: Kelva A. Perez, Kathy Lynn, Saswati Chanda, Abigail Sines,
Debabrata Basu, Keiko Ikeda, Prafulla Mishra, Johdah Bokhari

Involve community at all levels.
1. Involve community women and men in the academic work and research conducted in their community. This will assist citizens to give back in a way appropriate to their community.
2. Support formal roles of community women’s groups and other community-based organizations in preparedness and recovery processes, information gathering and dissemination, and training.
3. Respect and reward community ability to collect information, design, and implement programs.
4. Acknowledge and understand existing relationships within the community.
5. Support community to recognize and meet specific needs and responsibilities of women in preparedness and recovery.
Ensure equitable power in partnerships.
1. Foster equal partnerships and equal goals among members in disaster risk reduction partnerships across sectors and at multiple levels.
2. Provide equitable distribution of resources and support within community.
3. Ensure that grassroots women should benefit from and lead partnerships.
4. Respect and incorporate diverse cultures and traditional knowledge.
Ensure resources and funding.
1. Allocate resources so that partners receive benefit based on needs.
2. Ensure transparency and accountability to local groups.
3. Provide flexible funding to encourage sustainable, short and long term projects.
4. Concentrate resources in the hands of the local residents – without imposing outside interests/goals.
Address root causes of vulnerability.
1. Integrate issues of poverty and social vulnerability in designing disaster risk reduction programs to ensure that root problems are addressed and increase opportunities for participation from grassroots groups.

Communication, Training, and Education Strategies to Reduce Risk

Team Leaders: Elina Palm and Dawn Paleso’o
Facilitator: Christina Higa and Ed Young
Recorder: Emily Sjostrom
Participants: Claire Reiss, Kelva Perez, Monowar Akhand, Armi Mikayelyan, Anja Reissberg, Margery Webster, Nazette Rydell, Maryl, Sharon Meilbrecht

Improve formal and informal curriculum standards
1. Develop curriculum standards at all levels including the areas of science, technology and economics, with an integrated and gender-sensitive approach to environmentally sound and sustainable resource management and disaster reduction, response, and recovery to positively change behavior and attitudes in rural and urban areas.
Develop gender-sensitive policies, programs, and laws
1. Involve women’s groups and encourage, develop, review and implement gender sensitive laws, policies, and programs that include land-use and urban planning, natural resource and environmental management, and integrated water resources management, to provide opportunities to prevent and mitigate damage.
2. Encourage, as appropriate, the development and implementation of national building standards that take into account natural hazards so that women, men and their families are not exposed to high risk from disasters.
3. Influence policies at national levels on gender and disaster risk reduction.
4. Develop and establish mechanisms to influence policies on gender and disaster risk reduction at the national level.
Improve management, leadership skills, and decision making with gender awareness.
1. Improve basic management and leadership skills and pursue gender equality and gender-sensitive environmental management and disaster reduction, response and recovery as an integral part of sustainable development.
2. Ensure the full participation of women in sustainable development decision making and disaster reduction management at all levels.
Ensure access to information.
1. Increase and ensure women’s equal access to information and formal and non-formal education on disaster reduction, including gender-sensitive early warning systems, that empower women to take action in a timely and appropriate manner.
2. Ensure equal access for women and men to information related to disaster risk reduction issues.
Educate the media.
1. Educate media regarding their role in disaster risk reduction and the opportunities to utilize culturally appropriate mediums and effective communication tools (i.e. radio soap opera, risk management game board) to effectively warn and educate the public, specifically marginalized groups, on disaster risk management in the context of sustainable development.
Mainstream a gender perspective in educational and training initiatives using nongovernmental organizations and non-traditional institutions.
1. Encourage civil society organizations to mainstream a gender perspective in the promotion of sustainable development initiatives, including in disaster reduction
2. Target information and resources to non-traditional leaders of social institutions in the civil society community (i.e. religious leaders, leaders of women’s groups, leaders of men’s groups) to facilitate education of disaster issues.
3. Use women and youth organizations at both the national and community level to educate disaster issues.
Establish and strengthen cross-cutting partnerships and mainstream gender in corporate society
1. Establish and strengthen cross-cutting, interorganizational partnerships with the private sector, community-based women’s groups, NGOs, and government agencies.
2. Mainstream gender into corporate society to ensure its full participation.
Encourage women in disaster management positions.
1. Encourage women to enter disaster management field through equal access to training and education because women are underrepresented in disaster risk management organizations.
2. Develop retention mechanisms through mentoring, training, and flexible programs.

Using Science and Technology Differently

Team Leaders: Deborah Thomas and S.H.M. Fakhruddin
Facilitator: Ashmita Gosai
Recorder: Niki Dash
Participants: Eileen Shea, Nicole Colasacco, Nina Minka, Cheryl Anderson, Nezette Rydell, Faye Chambers

Increase participatory action research in science and technology. Promote a paradigm shift that infuses participatory research and gender issues in all disaster-risk reduction related activities.
1. Recognize that community participation should be at the heart of risk reduction initiatives and the development tools and technology in context with local concerns, using social science methods and participatory action research. Trust between science and community is essential for success.
2. Link science to society and produce a range of tools that can be used for multiple purposes. This facilitates innovation and application.
3. Increase funding for participatory research through scientific funding agencies. Required resources need to be made available to scientific agencies for participatory research.
4. Change reward structures in agencies, organizations, and academic institutions to acknowledge applied and participatory research and promote tenure for applied researchers.
5. Train scientists (physical, life, social, engineering, etc.), educators, decision-makers, and the public to recognize that science and technology is a process of exploration, not just a collection of facts and figures, by promoting inquiry science (teachers and students engaged in “hands-on” science projects) and citizen scientists.
Recognize expertise from many different backgrounds.
1. Recognize that a disaster risk reduction framework requires knowledge and expertise from different backgrounds and from multiple scientific and technological disciplines, multiple agencies at all levels, the private sector, nongovernmental organizations, and local communities.
2. Foster greater integration of local and traditional knowledge into disaster risk reduction programs.
Continue to focus on recruiting and retaining women into science and technology.
1. Move women not only into the workplace, but also into management level positions and leadership roles by empowering girls to pursue science and by increasing scholarships at the higher educational levels.
2. Increase job retention by developing programs in the workplace that recognize and support unique needs of women and men (e.g. for flexible schedules, job sharing).
3. Institutionalize mentoring relationships for women and establish support groups for girls and women for engaging in scientific inquiry (government, university, NGO, community, and private-sector).
Promote awareness about scientific and research ethical issues in disaster risk reduction.
1. Balance the benefits of science and technology with issues of confidentiality and privacy.
2. Provide equitable access to scientific and technological information and tools.
3. Promote equitable representation in science, policy development, and program implementation.
4. Consider how new information can change power structures within society and communities so that social systems are not irreparably altered in negative ways.
5. Focus research to understand these issues in the context of new technologies and tools (including looking for lessons in technological adoption from other fields).
6. Develop methods to assess ethical impacts of technological tools in communities.
Enhance efforts to share lessons from science and technology in different communities, regions, and disciplines, and elements of the disaster risk reduction community and learning from focus on successes and failures.
1. Secure support for the Gender and Disaster Network (GDN) as a clearinghouse or forum (http://online.northumbria.ac.uk/geography_research/gdn/).
2. Establish regional hubs/chapters for the GDN (look to examples from other organizations)

New Partnerships and Collaborations
Team Leaders: Ayse Yonder and Suzanne Shende

Facilitator: Nugroho Abikusno
Recorder: Arleen Hill
Participants: J. Landry, N. Weidner, G. Guibert, E. Enarson, N. Abikusno, A. Yonder, S. Shende, L. Orstad, A. Igrambi, A. Hill

The list of action items has been combined with the first group on Building Capacity in Women’s and Community Groups. The notes for this group from the first day have been included in the “Working Group” file.

Engendering Complex Emergency Responses

Leaders: Marion Pratt and Stuart Katwikirize
Facilitator: Sharon McHale
Raporteur: Karen Smith
Participants: Nga, Richard, Barbara, Marcella, Betty, Juniper, Sahana, Eugenia, Maigee

Promote recruitment and retention of experienced women and men in the field.
1. Retain experienced people in the field by providing training, incentives and opportunities that will reduce problems by having inexperienced staff. Implement a survey of experiences to find out why people leave work in the area of complex emergencies. There have been institutional-based studies, but maybe not an overall study for all in the field.
2. Improve appreciation of fieldworkers to maintain morale in this type of work.
3. Recruit people who have humanitarian perspective and not an elitist view. Fieldworkers and organizations need to understand and be sensitized to the context of people and their situations.
Create institutional memory that promotes dealing with specific gender issues on the ground during complex humanitarian emergencies.
1. Develop professionalism in the field of complex emergencies in which there would be institutionalized memory and opportunities for career progression once leaving fieldwork duties.
2. Bring in-country people into integration with disaster management, so experienced people are brought into the field of complex emergencies.
3. Establish a standardized process and protocol to gather feedback from the field, because data and information is rarely collected because the urgent nature of the work with variations in staffing, involvement of multiple organizations, and temporal variations of specified duties.
Undertake gender training activities and improve gender awareness with a view toward long-term implementation.
1. Promote gender training as a component of professionalizing the field. Gender training is part of raising the standard of excellence.
2. Foster training of local people to increase their skills. Education in complex emergencies is also an issue, but examples for this work could come from UNICEF.
3. Develop ways to convince policy and decision makers and funders that having gender sensitive issues is important by emphasizing security issues, including physical safety and access to food and water.
4. Increase attention, resources (time and space) and awareness. Donors allocate a certain percentage to gender based evaluation and training. Maybe use the consideration of “vulnerable people” instead of “gender”.
Engage in civil-military interaction and interface training
1. a place for discussions concerning disaster risk reduction in civil-military interactions. By engaging in mitigation actions resulting from these interactions, it is possible to reduce risk.
2. Engage dialogues, develop cross program interaction, and model joint interventions to build clarity of roles and relationships between civil society and the military during complex humanitarian emergencies.
Develop mechanisms for accountability, funding, and evaluation to pursue long-term improvement in gender awareness.
1. Educate decision makers and upper management. They need concrete plans: cost, who will do it, etc and require details on how training will happen.
2. Establish a body that examines and monitors these issues during the conference in Kobe.
3. One of first steps is to convince leaders of NGOs that engendering complex emergencies will improve their output.
4. Provide funding for follow up! Evaluation is an important step toward making

Changing Organizational Culture and Structure

Team Leaders: Pratima Singh & Yolanda Gomez
Facilitator: Carol Amaratunga
Recorder: Bill Lovekamp
Participants: Giselle Addison, John Egan, Mary Hope Schwoebel, Darlene Williams, Niki Rattle

Develop legislation ensuring disaster risk reduction is gender sensitive and addresses social equity.
1. Ensure that language is gender-sensitive.
Ensure that gender issues and social equity become part of disaster risk reduction agendas at international and national levels.
1. View women as resources and critical decision-makers in disaster mitigation and integrate women’s knowledge into policy and practice within all phases of the disaster process.
2. Establish gender audits (overall assessments for institutions and organizations of programs, budgets, policy, action, delivery of services, etc) (www.interaction.org) that are standardized across all levels
Develop a global legal framework for ensuring risk reduction is gender sensitive.
Improve structural arguments in national governments, local governments and in non-governmental organizations.
1. Link gender, social equity, and risk reduction policies and programs.
Institute a Global Fund for Gender-specific Disaster Risk Reduction (GDRR) (in all phases of Disaster Management).
1. Ensure national commitments and membership prerequisites
2. Ensure appropriate resource allocation.
Establish mechanisms for gathering and distributing information related to gender mainstreaming in disaster risk management.
1. Use the Gender and Disaster Network to relate best practices.
2. Provide good examples for the Gender and Disaster Sourcebook.
3. Document best practices in gender mainstreaming in all regions.
4. Establish checklists of accountability.

Research for Social Action

Team Leaders: Sudha Arlikatti and Lourdes Meyreles
Facilitator: Nuray Karanci
Recorder: Kristina Peterson
Participants: Barbara Flint, Patricia Stukes, Susan Cutter, Maureen Fordham, Brian Linneker, Sarah Bradshaw

Develop a gender focused ethical framework.
1. Develop a gender-focused ethic to frame disaster research with vulnerable populations, especially as it pertains to women – with consideration of unequal power relations---recognizing that gender: a) includes diversity of families and relationships, b) assists in examining diversity, and c) is an evolving concept due to its complexity in context and culture. This ethic should be incorporated into government, NGO, research and community levels, so that it permeates all levels of action and policies and funding.
Ensure accountability to gender guidelines and frameworks.
1. Hold all governments and NGO’s, international agencies and research bodies accountable to existing gender guidelines and frameworks when commissioning design and practice of research.
2. Review the ethical guidelines of researchers to insure the extent to which they are non-exploitive in process, practice, and policy.
3. Ensure informed consent (what are the ethical guidelines of research) timing issues.
4. Do no harm! Do Good always. Love thy neighbor. --- These are the ethical basis of any type of action and policy.
Fund research that addresses vulnerability.
1. Focus funding sources on supporting research for social action, that address root causes of vulnerability.
Develop indicators for gender analyses.
1. Develop indicators for gender analysis that include the following: a) health, b) assets, c) leadership, d) relationships, and e) poverty/economics. These should be understood and incorporated into action research.
2. Develop benchmarks and indicators to monitor efforts to integrate gender equality and social vulnerability in national and international disaster risk reduction activities.

Honoring Best Practices in Gender and Disaster Risk Reduction
Madhavi Malalgoda Ariyabandu is honored with the Mary Fran Meyers Award

Established in 2002, the Mary Fran Myers Award recognizes that vulnerability to disasters and mass emergencies is influenced by social, cultural, and economic structures that marginalize women and girls. The award was so named to honor Mary Fran’s sustained efforts to launch a worldwide network among disaster professionals advancing women’s careers and promoting research on gender issues, disasters, emergency management, and higher education.

This award recognizes people whose activities, advocacy efforts, or research has had a lasting, positive impact in reducing hazards vulnerability for women and girls. People whose work add to the body of knowledge on gender and disasters; is significant for the theory and/or practice of gender and disasters; or who have furthered opportunities for women to succeed in the hazards fields are eligible to receive the award. Previous winners include Mary Fran Myers, Natural Hazards Center (2002) and Betty Hearn Morrow, Florida International University (2003).

Madhavi Malalgoda Ariyabandu received the award in 2004 for her tireless work with ITDG South Asia in designing and coordinating research and training initiatives on risk reduction and gender issues in disaster. She has authored several books for disaster management in South Asia, published in several languages.

In receiving the award, Ariyabandu commented on the importance of disaster management initiatives that are coordinated with development efforts. She urged colleagues to incorporate cultural knowledge and local communities in risk reduction strategies.

Recognizing the best practices and hard work of members in the gender and disaster risk management community promotes the concepts and recommendations discussed throughout the working sessions. It is important to document and share best practices. The award enables the community to share in successes, as well.

Roles and Responsibilities of Men in Promoting Gender
Equality in Disaster Risk Reduction

Following lunch on the second day of the workshop, the men attending the workshop met briefly to discuss their roles in promoting gender equality in disaster risk reduction. As they discussed their roles and responsibilities, the men proposed the following statements of advocacy:

Men need to advocate for gender equality.
Men need to deliver gender mainstreaming messages to other men.
Men need to be full partners in gender sensitivity training.
Men as leaders need to be committed to bringing gender equity results within their own organizations.
Men need to confront gender stereotyping, and create opportunities for personal and institutional transformation.
Men need to recognize that women have lots of personal knowledge and skills in coping with disasters, and that more women need to be trained as first responders.
Tools and methodologies are needed to sensitize and empower men to implement gender equality.
A separate workshop on men’s role in gender equality/gender mainstreaming is needed, and sessions should be held at upcoming meetings, such as the National Hazards Research Workshop, Sociology, disaster mitigation, and other forums.
The Gender and Disaster Network should be used to share ideas, tools, and best practices (e.g. examine gender sensitivity that was provided to troops who served in East Timor, which resulted in a major reduction in violent incidences against women).

The Future of Gender Equality and Disaster Risk Reduction: Kobe and Beyond

Call to Action
A voluntary Coordinating Group began meeting through online discussions the week after the workshop to prepare the “Honolulu Call to Action”--- a series of recommendations and implementation strategies resulting from the workshop. This Call to Action (included on this disk for review) will be presented at the World Conference on Disaster Reduction (WCDR) in Kobe, Japan in January 2005.

The Coordinating Group has also examined the language in WCDR background documents and recommended areas where gender considerations should be incorporated into disaster reduction strategies. These recommendations are being made through the national delegates who will be attending WCDR.

Gender and Disaster Sourcebook
One targeted outcome of the workshop will be a Gender and Disaster Sourcebook (funded by the Public Entity Risk Institute and the East-West Center Pacific Disaster Center). A team of authors coordinated by Elaine Enarson will research the user-friendly Sourcebook, designed for regional adaptation and geared to planners and practitioners across sectors. The team members will gather existing documents, brochures, case studies, and success stories in various languages worldwide. The initial document will be published in English on CD-ROM and the internet, to be stored at the Gender and Disaster Network website. The concept is to have a working, available resource that provides examples for implementing gender fair practices to reduce risks from disasters. Several authors will provide a debut of the expected format of the Sourcebook at the World Conference on Disaster Reduction (WCDR) to gain further input from the broader disaster risk management community.

Evaluation and Recommendations for Future Workshops
Most of the participants felt that the three days of working groups (Building Capacity in Women’s and Community Groups; Communication, Education, and Training Strategies; Gendered Science and Technology; New Partnerships and Collaborations; Engendering Complex Emergencies; Changing Organizational Culture, Structures, and Resources; and, Participatory Action Research) did not provide enough time to get as detailed with the action items as we would have liked. Each working group, however, managed to outline actions that should be undertaken.

The majority of participants felt that the workshop met their expectations. A few criticisms recommended a tighter structure that would have enabled more time in working groups to prepare better detailed action items followed by well-defined commitments for implementation. The work of the online coordinating committee does show some promise for pursuing action items beyond the workshop, but the types of commitments that an informal working group can push will not address all of the implementing actions. Several recommendations following the workshop suggested the formation of a formal monitoring group, but they would only be able to monitor international decisions. The structures to address local issues and national issues must be developed in those areas, and while the international community provides funding, resources, and recommendations, it is likely that the ability to address these detailed issues would need to take place in the local and national arenas.

The opportunity to network with others in the disaster risk management community who consider gender as a critical issue was helpful to many of the participants. Participants overwhelmingly recommended future workshops to take place in another location. The Honolulu workshop targeted the Asia-Pacific region more than the Miami workshop, where more participants from Latin America and Africa attended. Future workshops could be in another country besides the USA, as there are a number of countries working on gender and disaster risk reduction. In order to address the specific details requested by participants, regional and national workshops might be needed, as the structure and logistical constraints of an international workshop did not permit much participation from non-English speaking participants. To sustain momentum and monitor action implementation, it is critical to have the face-to-face contact periodically. The workshops provide additional support, encouragement, and motivation that email and virtual networks lack.

These workshop proceedings have been distributed on CD-ROM and through the workshop website, www.ssri.hawaii.edu/research/GDWwebsite. This document will eventually be hosted at the Gender and Disaster Network website, http://online.northumbria.ac.uk/geography_research/gdn/.

Participants are looking for opportunities to promote issues of integrating gender issues in disaster risk reduction. The World Conference on Disaster Reduction in Kobe, Japan in January 2005 provides the first forum for integrating gender as a cross-cutting issue. According to the discussions and recommendations of this workshop, promoting gender equality must occur at many levels and in many forums before we see real change and implementation of strategies.

Individuals from the workshop have continued to promote the concepts of improving gender equality in their organizations. The Call to Action appeals to the participants in their spheres of influence and extends into the local and national organizations. By working on multiple levels throughout the world, the hope is that gender issues will be better understood in disaster risk management, that organizations and institutions will develop gender equity, and that gender-fair practices will be implemented globally.