Saving and protecting lives by empowering women

Deborah Clifton and Fiona Gell

Women and men face different risks and vulnerabilities during disaster, and they bring different resources to preparing for and coping with disaster. Less well recognised are the ways in which humanitarian interventions themselves influence the nature of gender relations during crises. A gender-blind humanitarian response which does not address gender-specific issues and does not pay particular attention to the situation of women can worsen both the immediate survival prospects for women and their families, and women's long-term position in society. This article contends that the process of providing humanitarian aid and the institutions that deliver it tend to be inherently male-biased and thus discriminatory against women, and that a commitment is needed both to understanding how institutional bias works against women, and to challenging the status quo.

Humanitarian agencies and their multi-million pound interventions have enormous power to challenge gender discrimination, perpetuate it, or even exacerbate it. The use of gender analysis to determine a gender-fair response is a critical factor in determining the outcome. A review of the literature on gender in humanitarian response reveals very little use of comprehensive gender analysis. The information available is anecdotal rather than analytical, and the inability to identify specific impact in terms of gender relations is a result of the fact that few programmes set out to challenge gender inequity. It is no wonder that achieving gender-equitable outcomes remains one of the great unmet challenges of humanitarian work.

How humanitarian interventions shape gender relations

Until quite recently, disaster-affected women have been viewed and portrayed primarily as passive and needy victims, a 'vulnerable group'. This limited view has almost always resulted in humanitarian responses focusing solely on meeting women's immediate practical needs. Good practice on gender in emergencies has come to mean paying attention to the role of women in food distribution, providing sanitary towels, and ensuring adequate lighting and health services for women. These are important steps, but they remain rooted in an approach that is oblivious to social relations and power dynamics. It is true that gender inequality is a root cause of vulnerability, creating or contributing to particular risks for women. However, focusing on women's vulnerability – to the neglect of their capacities and resources, and their longer-term interests – misrepresents the actual experiences of women and men and negatively affects the culture and practice of emergency management (Enarson 1998).

Gender analysis recognises women's work and decision-making influence as central to preparing for, responding to, recovering from, and mitigating community disasters. By building on this analysis, gender-fair humanitarian aid puts women's immediate and longer term interests at the heart of the assessment and planning process, thus ensuring that their chances of survival are increased, their coping strategies strengthened, and their status in the community raised with consequent improvements for the well-being of the whole community. It requires inclusive, participatory, democratic models of response that involve women not only as victims but also as resourceful community actors. In practice, however, women's representation is still often lacking in disaster response teams, emergency programme management, and the formal and informal participation needed to rebuild communities.

Gender-fair emergency management also seeks to challenge the longer-term structural barriers to women's vulnerability to disasters. Since disaster mitigation seeks to address the underlying causes of vulnerability, in addition to physical measures such as raising land or building dikes it must also address longer-term strategic factors such as unequal land ownership, wealth distribution, and gender inequality. Communities are safer and more resilient to crisis when they are more egalitarian, and when all social groups are empowered in a way that enables them to contribute their respective opinions and resources.

When external agencies provide resources without considering gender issues they can seriously jeopardise the position of women. With already fewer opportunities for education, employment, and leadership than men, women are likely to be further disadvantaged by interventions that reinforce traditional roles and relationships. If too many resources are targeted to women without adequate analysis of the risks involved and without adequate participation of women, their security and position may be further jeopardised by backlash from men. Women must be fully involved in determining the pace of change, as they are the best judges of resistance and how to overcome it.

If gender equity goals are considered at all, they are typically equated with post-emergency rehabilitation or development work, where it is more straightforward to address gender inequities than in relief work. However, the role of relief in laying the foundations for rebuilding the social, economic, and physical infrastructure of communities is now well recognised. The long-term course of a humanitarian response can be set by programme decisions made within the first few days of relief work. Hence, getting the relief response right for women as well as men from day one is of paramount importance.

Why gender equity and women's empowerment are vital to saving and protecting lives

The aims of humanitarian intervention

Gender analysis in any programme needs to take as its starting point the following questions. Are the overall goals sensitive to the interests of both women and men? If so, how can these aspirations to achieve gender equity be made explicit and developed into actionable plans?

The aim of humanitarian response is to save and protect lives quickly and effectively in the event of an emergency, in order to ensure that fewer people die, fall sick, or suffer deprivation. Underlying these aims are two fundamental principles recognised by the humanitarian community: that those affected by disaster have a right to life with dignity and therefore a right to assistance; and that all possible steps should be taken to alleviate human suffering arising out of conflict and calamity (Sphere Project 2000). This includes the right to an adequate standard of living, and to freedom from cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.

Two further principles with significant implications for gender equality are laid out by the Red Cross Code of Conduct for NGOs in Disaster Relief. Firstly, 'proportionality' – humanitarian aid should be provided in measures proportional to the degree of suffering it seeks to address. Secondly, 'impartiality' – the provision of aid must be made on the basis of need 'regardless of race, creed, or nationality of the recipients and without adverse distinction of any kind'. This principle implies that the aims of saving and protecting lives must apply equally to women and men, and that we must strive for equity, or fairness, of outcome. The Code of Conduct also states that interventions should support and not diminish the role of women in disaster-affected populations.

This section sets out why a gender-fair approach is essential to fulfilling the principles and aims set out above. The rest of the article discusses how to achieve this.

The efficiency rationale

It is widely recognised that women's empowerment and greater equality between women and men are a necessary pre-requisite for social justice, sustainable development, and for peace (United Nations 1995). This applies equally to the humanitarian context. Empowered women will be able to make a much greater contribution to preparing for and coping with disaster. In addition, the experience of participating on an equal footing with men in disaster management can be a very empowering one for women. Communities and agencies therefore need to seize any opportunities resulting from the crisis for improvements in the relative condition and status of women. Such opportunities are often created by shifts in demographic patterns, when women and men may assume new roles and responsibilities. Communities and agencies also need to support women to hold on to gains in gender relations made during the crisis.

A series of structural barriers work against women's active participation and empowerment in disaster response, including their reproductive burden, lower levels of education, lower access to and control over resources, lower status, and limited mobility. Humanitarian agencies need to recognise and challenge these barriers, and at the very least ensure that their interventions do not exacerbate them. They need to address the practical and protection needs of both women and men in the immediate crisis, recognise and build on the roles and resources that men and women bring to coping with the crisis, and address the longer-term needs and interests of women and men. If these needs are appropriately addressed, the coping capacity of communities for future disasters will be strengthened. Steps must be taken to include a fairer distribution of power between women and men, and this may imply an extension of the typical sectoral scope of humanitarian response which precludes attention to several critical gender issues. Strengthening women's leadership role will involve finding ways to share their reproductive burdens, and strengthening men's role in household work.

The focus of the approach needs to be on analysing the situation of both women and men, and working with both to achieve gender-equitable outcomes. However, the fact that women start from a relative position of greater suffering, poverty, and disempowerment means that, if the aims of proportionality and impartiality are to be achieved, special attention must be paid to the situation of women, and resources must be allocated accordingly. Only then can progress be made in restoring a balance in gender relations.

Such a gender-fair approach has the potential to increase humanitarian impact in the following ways:

• Lives can be saved and protected (i.e. mortality, morbidity, and malnutrition reduced) by the most effective and efficient means when gender-specific needs are met appropriately and gender-specific capacities and resources fully utilised. Improvements in the condition and status of women will have overall benefit for the survival and well-being of the whole family.

• Lives can be saved and protected with a greater degree of proportionality and impartiality because achievements in 'fewer people dying, falling sick, or suffering deprivation' will benefit women and men in better proportion to their relative suffering. However, it is important to note that in order to achieve an outcome (lives saves and protected) which is impartial to gender, the process needs to focus on the interests of women in order to restore balance to an unequal situation.

• The chances of a life with dignity being enjoyed by women and men equally will be significantly increased with women having greater control over their situation during the crisis and hopefully in the longer-term.

• The overall capacity of communities to prepare for and cope with future disasters will be enhanced through harnessing the resources and active participation of both men and women in more productive ways

The rights-based rationale

Because gender-based discrimination is a critical inhibitor to poverty alleviation, sustainable development, and good governance, gender advocates argue for an approach that recognises and confronts gender inequities and the denial of women's social, economic, and political rights. The right to life with dignity, to exercise one's human rights, and the right to self-determination are significantly dependent on gender. A rights-based approach to humanitarian aid involves the equal protection of the human rights of women and men, special attention to the violation of human rights of women, and the equal and active representation of women and men at all levels of decision-making.

The Sphere Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards represent a rights-based approach to humanitarian intervention. The principles of impartiality, proportionality, and a right to life with dignity are concerned with achieving equal rights for all social groups regardless of gender, ethnicity, religion, disability, age, or any other form of social identity. Equal rights for women and men are fundamental to this approach. This is reflected in the fact that among the wide range of human rights instruments that underpin the Humanitarian Charter is the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). CEDAW legally obliges the states that are party to the convention to take measures to prevent violence against women, and to eliminate discrimination in issues such as access to health care, ownership of property, and participation in public life.

The Beijing Platform for Action, which resulted from the Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995, is another key rights-based agreement. It sets out the most radical global agenda yet for the empowerment of women. Most of the twelve Critical Areas of Concern in the Platform for Action relate in some way to the humanitarian context, but the most critical strategic objectives are those set for violence against women, women and armed conflict, and the human rights of women. While not legally binding, this agreement is signed by 189 states, and represents an important lever for change. It provides a set of benchmarks towards which international actors can strive in humanitarian as well as development practice.

A rights-based approach aims to enable all poor and marginalised people, women and men, to exercise their rights. It must therefore address the many ways in which women and men can be marginalised as a result of other aspects of their social identity such as ethnicity, class, caste, disability, and age.

The rights-based rationale for a gender-fair approach to humanitarian aid supports the efficiency rationale. Acknowledging women's rights as human rights is essential if gender awareness and analysis are to help determine the most appropriate response. But this will only happen if there is an understanding of why upholding women's rights is essential in both efficiency and human rights terms, and a commitment to seek opportunities to make this happen from all actors within the humanitarian operation. If agencies fail to follow these principles, they risk becoming complicit in further discriminating against women and worsening their position in society.

Understanding and challenging resistance

There remains a baffling level of resistance in the humanitarian community toward an approach that seeks gender equality. This seems to stem from lack of understanding, skills, and commitment to identify and challenge gender discrimination. More fundamentally, it reflects an inherent male bias in humanitarian institutions, and the fact that the personal relations of many staff may also be based on inequitable gender relations. Here we cite and respond to some of the arguments raised against striving for gender equity during emergencies.

There is a concern that attempting to empower women during disasters is to unfairly manipulate local culture when a community is at its most vulnerable and has little power to challenge humanitarian agencies on which it depends. Yet, how often is this concern cited by crisis-affected women? Striving for gender equity is part of a universal human rights agenda. It is, of course, imperative that local communities regulate the pace of change and shape its course to ensure their own protection from cultural backlash. Hence the need to strive for full and active participation of women in programmes.