Today’s session on women and “natural disasters” spawned this thread in my head. I mean. The thoughts were there. The thread is here.

Let me start w 2 tropes.
1.Women are worse affected in disasters.
2.Women are better managers of disasters.

Both are empirical questions.

Who are women (or men. Or neither)? heterogeneous groups of persons. Rich. Poor. Old. Young. Educated. Not. Salaried. Not.

You get the drift.

What are #disasters? A heterogeneous group of occurrences. #Floods. #Cyclones. #Hurricane. #Earthquakes. Each with its uniqueness.

When we speak of people who “manage” disasters who and what do we mean? And which stage of the occurrence? Pre? During? Post?
Who’s a “good manager” of a disaster? Is there such a thing? At what level? Household? Community? Sub national? National?

Of course there are agencies entrusted w managing disasters. But we’re not speaking of those. We’re taking about private citizens.

Oh and finally. The oft heard “women are more likely to die in a disaster”. Really? Yes, in some disasters. Not all.

Self citation here bc I took a look at deaths in floods. It’s not at all clear that women are more likely to die across the board. In fact, there’s a #systematicreview for that. Check out the citation here and a screenshot.

https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/27949/W17068.pdf?sequence=4&isAllowed=y