Book 2 - Ebu

Learning Resource Kit: Book 2
My stories soon captured a compelling stream of voices that portrayed the uphill struggle
women faced in the recovery process. One major theme was on gaining property rights
after the death of their husbands as land and houses are usually registered in the names
of the male household head. The process of transferring ownership involved the daunting
task of negotiation for the women who had few skills or experience in navigating the
bureaucracy. Other stories highlighted gender discrimination in financial compensation;
payouts given to women were lower than those given to men. It was also clear that social
handicaps placed on females impeded their ability to survive the floods; girls and women
died because they had not learnt to swim or climb trees, skills that would have helped
them escape the swirling waves. In my stories I prioritized the growing calls for changes,
focusing on movements and opinions that represented serious social change in Sri Lanka.
My stories on the Tohoku disaster in Japan uncovered similar issues and new
developments to bring social equality into disaster risk reduction and recovery efforts.
In Japan the experience of gaining access to female voices for my stories was not easy
at the beginning. The March 2011 disaster was massive and wiped out thousands of
communities causing enormous chaos. The main challenge for women however was
local tradition. Tohoku comprises close-knit farming and fishing communities with a
strong patriarchal cultural identity. Women’s experiences in the disaster were rarely
recorded; women were presented as a vulnerable and stoic group. The spokespersons in
evacuation centres were male, as were the local village and town officials. Women, even
when asked to provide an opinion, shunned the media spotlight, insisting they had
nothing important to publicize. The strategy to find younger women for interviews bore
fruit; they were more willing to break social restrictions and told insightful accounts of
women’s agency during the disaster, as rescuers of the elderly and children, as caregivers
during the long and stressful evacuation, and as psychosocial support providers.
Lesson
Approaching the
story with an
awareness of the
different impacts
of disasters on
women and men
helps construct a
more interesting and
representative story
that could influence
policy actions.
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