Opinion: Disaster risk reduction efforts must center on gender equity

This week, the United Nations is assessing the global state of disaster risk reduction. While designing DRR efforts with women and girls front and center can improve both environmental outcomes and shift power, this is still not being done systematically.

At the midterm review of the implementation of the Sendai Framework — the international framework that outlines seven global targets for disaster risk reduction to be met by 2030 — states will evaluate progress, challenges, and opportunities to meet these goals.
The review comes at a critical time when extreme weather events are becoming both more frequent and severe. In my country of Uganda, my community and I lost all of our crops during 2019 and 2020 due to an unprecedented and prolonged drought. It brought on hunger and poor nutrition, resulting in diseases such as rickets in children. Women from the community were the first responders, saving their families from starvation by gathering fruits, mushrooms, and tubers from the government-protected forest. They in turn offered their service to construct a fireline to stop the forest from being burnt during the drought.

My story is not unique: Evidence shows that women and girls are more frequently at the scene of disasters than men and boys. This is largely due to social and gender norms that confine women and girls to work in private at their homes, while the men go out to seek paid employment. Besides, women often do not develop much-needed survival skills. In the event of a disaster such as a flood, for instance, men can easily climb a tree to escape. But women, barred by social norms and values from climbing trees from childhood, do not develop the skill and may be swept away.