PAKISTAN: Quake offers a window of opportunity for women empowerment
ISLAMABAD, 22 Dec 2006 (IRIN) – Pakistan’s earthquake of October
2005, the worst natural disaster in the country’s history, served as
a window of opportunity for empowering Pakistani women and enabling them
to take an active role in building disaster-resilient communities, noted
this year’s World Disasters Report of the International Federation
of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC).
IFRC’s annual account has devoted a whole chapter on gender impacts
of disasters, with a particular focus on the women of northern Pakistan
who survived the earthquake but struggled to access their fair share of
aid.
The International Federation has urged the aid organisations to
incorporate more gender-aligned disaster response strategies globally
when dealing in emergency situations to ensure the rights of women to be
equal partners.
Gender-aware NGOs and civil society groups have improved women’s
engagement in relief and recovery, but these efforts remain largely
isolated and insufficient.
“Field work in Pakistan suggested gender awareness was much more
likely within NGOs, the Red Cross and Red Crescent, and UN agencies as
opposed to Pakistani government organisations,” commented the IFRC
report, released last Thursday.
More than 75,000 people were killed and 3.5 million people left homeless
after the quake ripped through parts of northern Pakistan, inflicting
extensive damage on public and private infrastructure across an area of
30,000 sq km.
“The earthquake was the worst kind of catastrophe, but it brought
out women and girls. [Now] There are opportunities, specially in
[traditionally very conservative] North West Frontier Province
(NWFP),” said Fareeha Ummar of the Aga Khan Rural Support Project.
An IFRC assessment found that none of the Pakistani women interviewed in
a rapid assessment had undertaken paid work before the earthquake.
However, afterwards several international aid agencies took initiatives
to encourage female employment when a large number of households lost
their male family heads.
In a tent village of quake-hit Balakot town in NWFP, the International
Labour Organization (ILO) employed women to be responsible for
cleanliness and also initiated a quilt-making enterprise.
“God caused the earthquake and it has brought a lot of destruction,
but it has shaken the roots of society and has brought change into
women’s lives and has given us a voice,” a woman from
Muzaffarabad, capital of Pakistani-administered Kashmir, told Sumeera
Mehboob Qureshi, chair of a female committee for quake-displaced camps
set up by the office of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees
(UNHCR) earlier this year in February.
While mentioning gender inequality, the IFRC report also noted the fact
that in disasters men’s psychological health is often neglected and
their psychological needs left untreated because of cultural norms.
“The stereotypical expectations of men to `be strong’ means
that their specific health needs during disaster have not been widely
recognised. Humanitarian workers can overestimate men’s emotional
strength; men and boys may need gender-sensitive support to deal with
trauma, loss and the challenge of recovery,” the annual report said.
Some men widowed by the earthquake in Pakistan said they wanted to
remarry soon to ensure that they had a mother figure for their young
children.
One major area of concern cutting across many disasters is the poor
management of women’s and girl’s personal hygiene needs, the
IFRC’s annual account said in its chapter entitled, `Please
don’t raise gender now – we’re in an emergency!”
A female government official from Sri Lanka, who was part of the
district team responsible for tsunami disaster relief, admitted that
even as a woman, it took her several days to ensure sanitary supplies
were included in emergency distributions.
While Pakistani quake-affected women didn’t know how to use Western
sanitary items, poorer women often used washable rags rather than
sanitary items.
“In most cultures, menstruation is an extremely private female
issue. This posed difficulties for women queuing up publicly to obtain
sanitary items from mainly male relief teams,” noted the IFRC
report.
“In the male-dominated world of disasters management, it takes
experience and gender training to consider such issues from the
start,” it commented.
“When gender is neglected in disaster response and risk reduction,
impact, needs and priorities are also overlooked; poverty and inequality
are exacerbated; vulnerability is intensified and new categories of
victims are created,” John Tulloch, an IFRC spokesman, said in the
Pakistani capital, Islamabad.
Although a number of humanitarian organisations have initiated
gender-related data collection, it remains largely ad hoc, which is a
barrier to gender-sensitive disaster project planning and evaluation.
“It is time to end the neglect of gender in disasters and ensure the
rights of women [and men] to be equal partners throughout all aspects of
disaster risk reduction and response,” the report concluded.
Ismailimail 