Making disaster relief work better for women and men

Address by Ms Christine Evans-Klock
ILO Subregional Office for East Asia:

Ms Chairperson, co-speakers, distinguished guests, and colleagues. I would like to begin by expressing my condolences and sympathy to those of you who have experienced a loss of loved ones due to the tsunami or other crises and disasters, which have recently hit countries in Asia and the Pacific.

We have all been moved by compassion and by admiration for the courage and fortitude of the women, men and families coping to rebuild their lives and by the commitment of all those who reach out to assist them. So this year on International Women’s Day it is most appropriate that we take a moment to look at how our response and our assistance – from UN agencies, governments, and community-based groups – is enabling women to overcome all of the challenges this calamity has brought them and how we are enabling women to be actors for change and rehabilitation in their own families, communities and public policies.
The ILO, as many of you are aware, focuses on the promotion of fundamental labour rights, and the creation of more and better jobs and social protection. The ILO’s practice of social dialogue is an important tool for this effort, bringing together governments, workers’ and employers’ organizations, as well as representatives of community organizations and academic institutions.

In this panel I would like to share with you WHY and HOW the ILO puts gender into the mainstream of recovery work to better the lives of women and men in the aftermath of natural or human-caused disasters

The Tsunami waves hit all within its reach: men, women, girls and boys, nationals, migrant workers and tourists without distinction by age, sex, colour, or income. However, for the survivors, the ability to respond, to rebuild, to change livelihoods, to get help is not the same for everyone. Experience worldwide has shown us that gender is a key factor in how disasters affect people within communities and therefore gender must also be a critical factor in guiding subsequent relief, rehabilitation and development action.
WHY do disasters have different effects on different people? One reason is because disasters tend to sharpen any existing inequalities.

First, there is the inequality of safety and security. The chaos and disorder that follows such catastrophes leaves women and girls vulnerable to violence and sexual abuse.

Second, there is the inequality of being heard. Because of their poverty or low socio-economic standing, women and girls may not be able to get the relief aid and resources they need or to be able to voice their needs when decisions are made about their future.

Third, there is the inequality of work. The death or injury of a male breadwinner may force women to accept dual roles, as the family income earner as well as the main care-giver for children, the elderly, the sick, and the newly disabled.

This is compounded by a fourth inequality: A lack of skills and work experience puts women at a disadvantage in the labour market, which in times of desperation puts them at special risk of trafficking, prostitution, debt bondage, and other kinds of exploitation.
Finding out the facts is vital in any crisis response. We need to base our response on understanding how these underlying factors of gender inequality play themselves out in the specific affected communities and target our actions accordingly:

To take just a few examples from the tsunami-affected regions in Asia…

• In Sri Lanka, many women are facing having to go into wage or self-employment for the first time. A survey of affected households revealed that many women are aware that they lack the skills for employment and they need assistance in identifying appropriate job and livelihood opportunities.
• At the same time as more women need to look for income-earning activities outside the home, they can no longer depend on the extended family support system for child and other care work. The tsunami calamity has led to an increase in single parent households, and many need support to balance income-earning and household care duties.
• The loss of homes, work places and land affects women in poverty disproportionately hard because, generally, they have less access to resources and because labour arrangements are often negotiated by men. In countries where women are not adequately represented in decision-making in the public sphere this works seriously to their disadvantage, such as in Banda Aceh Indonesia.
• As many of my co-speakers have pointed out or will discuss in more detail, disasters create stress and stress easily gives rise to violence, discrimination and exploitation. Women in general, are vulnerable to violence in times of upheaval, especially if they are young, and live and work in insecurity. Men’s psychological needs are often overlooked which can lead to violence and depression if not addressed.
• Migrant families are also at high risk. In Thailand, many migrant fishermen died leaving their families without income. Migrant workers in hotels, restaurants and the entertainment industry –women and men alike - suffered greatly. Many who had registered with the local authorities as migrant workers lost their documents when homes or workplaces were destroyed and it has been difficult for them to obtain new permit papers. If they had not registered, their situation in the country became even more precarious. In either case, many migrant workers were unable to collect accumulated wages, were afraid to ask for basic humanitarian assistance, and had no means of listing or identifying disaster victims. It was especially difficult for wives and children of missing or killed workers to re-establish their legal status and be protected under Thai law. The situation for a migrant -sending country like Sri Lanka is very different but again the consequences for women are especially burdensome. The government there has received requests from families to recall their overseas breadwinners because they are needed at home to cope with the care responsibilities following deaths of adult family members. This may deprive families of alternative sources of income at the same time as local livelihood opportunities have literally been washed away.

The good news in dealing with disasters is that women have proven to be engines of recovery alongside men in dealing with disasters. As society’s last safety net, women have proven to be resilient, resourceful, innovative and pro-active in extreme conditions.

However, we are often faced with a paradox: Women and their children are widely shown in the media when portraying the horrible effects of disasters and calling for donations. Beyond their appeal in the eyes of the camera, in contrast, experience has shown that women, all too often, become invisible in relief and recovery programmes. It is the duty of development organizations – at international, national, and community levels - to ensure that women can participate in and benefit from reconstruction on an equal footing with men.

HOW to do this effectively? We have learned many good lessons about integrating gender in recovery measures. I am going to remind you of just six of them:

FIRST, it is sometimes thought that a trade-off is needed between speed of action and addressing vital gender concerns. But this has proven to be counter-productive to long-run sustainable recovery. Attention to gender concerns up-front pays off in long-run well-being of families and communities.

SECOND, we need to take into account existing gender relations not only among end-users but also among service providers and policy-makers. We need to look first at ourselves and ask…
- Is our own staff or leadership gender responsive?
- Can men effectively reach women end-users of services we are trying to provide, or is there a need for female extension workers?
- Is training or sensitization or specific gender expertise needed before we move on to develop and implement measures effectively?

THIRD, we can ensure that any crisis-response measure results in a win-win situation for both women and men. It has been proven time and again that women’s empowerment leads to the advancement and development of everyone in society. However, ingrained perceptions and insecurities may lead to resistance among men and women in decision-making seats of power. This resistance needs to be transformed, upfront, into commitment to cooperation.

FOURTH, we can involve women and men equally in reconstruction planning, implementation and monitoring to ensure that their strategic interests are represented. We can deliberately involve women’s groups at all levels and ensure that women can take decisions alongside men in areas where they might be traditionally side-lined, such as on decisions on infrastructure investments.

FIFTH, we must decentralize decision-making and implementation, making sure that we do not do for others what they can better do themselves. But in this effort we must avoid adding to women’s unpaid workload – we must avoid inadvertently contributing to any impression that women’s work is volunteer work. We can recruit and pay women for their contributions alongside men, for example in labour-based infrastructure reconstruction. And we can set an example by offering services that help the women we employ deal with their care-giving responsibilities.

SIXTH, we can make a long-run difference in the lives of many women by making sure that skills training programmes and business development services avoid gender stereotyping. Instead of even inadvertently reinforcing traditional male- and female-dominated career choices in our reconstruction work, we can open up more and different occupations in more industries for women and for men.

Friends and colleagues and honoured guests, this is what I would like to share with you: The ILO, as all other UN agencies, believes it is vital to carry out gender analysis and planning in any development work. This has become known as the Gender Mainstreaming Strategy, a term adopted in the Beijing Platform of Action during the 4th World Conference on Women in Beijing. Here at ILO in Bangkok, we refer to this as GEMS. Women are jewels and what they can contribute to development is brilliant. They need to be given the opportunity to contribute to and benefit from our disaster relief efforts on an equal footing with men.

In all of our work, we are taking sure and steady steps to fight discrimination and poverty and gender stereotyping. To the extent that we have learned and taught these lessons, the easier it is to respond appropriately and effectively in emergency situations. And the better we have done our work on a day-to-day basis to empower women, the easier our job will be to help them rebuild their lives and livelihoods in the aftermath of disaster.

The recent experience of the response to the earthquake and tsunami shows us that people are willing to walk many miles and contribute from the bottoms of their hearts and their pocketbooks to rebuild the lives of those who were hurt. In the ILO we firmly believe that societies become wealthier in material and spiritual terms when women and men can benefit and participate equally in development. I would like to call on all of us today, on International Women’s Day, to redouble our efforts to make this a reality.