Development failures increase women's vulnerabilities to disaster

Popular international development models are rarely holistic in design, often leaving the most at risk-women in poor communities and cities-- vulnerable in the event of a disaster. Their marginal location, insecure housing and lack of services coupled with an accelerated rate of urbanization and exclusion from the design and implementation of development processes often leave women highly vulnerable to disaster loss. Without access to and control over essential services, and a lack of participation in the execution of local development processes that are responsive to women's needs, the effects of disasters are compounded for women. 

"Since it comes out of the social and political movements that women themselves generate, rather than because of state intervention, its success ultimately must depend on their participation in the planning process."Caroline Moser. Gender planning and development: Theory, practice and training. London: Routledge. 1993. P. 10

Post disaster programs are top down, externally managed and treat women as victims and beneficiaries.

Post disaster assessments, which lead to multilateral investments, have focused on physical, structural elements and have been weak on social recovery. Post-disaster entitlement structures have tended to favor house owners vs. non-owners or renters, formal vs. informal labor, male headed vs. female headed households. By seeing grassroots women primarily as victims and aid recipients, most government and INGO led programs marginalize grassroots women from decision making processes and fail to mobilize their leadership, innovation and skills which would enhance the quality of recovery and reconstruction programs. 

When supported, women can, and do, undertake the following roles effectively:

• Be part of assessing damage and loss, particularly to women whose household assets, care giving networks, informal incomes are frequently unaccounted for in damage assessments
• Organize distribution of aid to make sure it reaches particularly vulnerable groups. They can run community kitchens, direct aid supplies to the elderly, sick, injured.
• Coordinate volunteers
• Act as community facilitators and information disseminators to support communities to access information, resources, shelter, health services, work, etc
• Monitor services and provide feedback to authorities on a regular basis.
• In the recovery stage they can shape and monitor the extent to which shelter, basic services to ensure that these respond to priorities of grassroots women and their communities.

Grassroots women have numerous strategies to reduce community vulnerability, which are embedded in their development and poverty reduction efforts, yet are often not recognized as key stakeholders and active agents of resilience building. By empowering grassroots women to shape recovery and reconstruction programs, this grassroots women-led approach counters top-down, externally managed programs and the class and gender biases embedded in them.