December 14, 2015
“There’s no such thing as a purely ‘natural’ disaster. These events enter into what’s already in place in terms of class, race, gender, poverty, and other factors—they therefore have differential effects.”That’s the core insight guiding Joni Seager’s work on the gendered nature of natural disaster outcomes, and it’s one that she’s quick to point out builds on the work of many other scholars in the field. For a long time, Seager says, the class implications of natural disasters have been obvious, as the poor are the least resilient with the fewest resources. In the last few years, however, Seager and others have been looking at the gendered aspects of natural disaster preparedness and disaster recovery efforts around the world -- and the implications for women are troubling.