Disasters Are Gendered: What’s New? - Reducing Disaster: Early Warning Systems for Climate Change - page 259

controlling mobility and use of public space; (15) be subject to male authority in the
household regarding use of emergency assistance assets and key decisions about
evacuation and relocation.
Pre-existing structures of gender inequality, such as these, shape and deepen
vulnerability to disaster. Congruent social inequalities make disasters even worse.
Typically the explanation for why certain people are more affected by disaster than
others involves a combination of factors. In terms of climate change, the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has emphasized that the ability
to adapt to climate-induced changes is a function of several strategic factors includ-
ing wealth, technology, information, skills, infrastructure, institutions, equity,
empowerment, and the ability to spread risk. On the household level, these factors
are translated into gender-differentiated contexts, including control over land,
money, credit, and tools; high dependency ratios; levels of literacy and education;
health and personal mobility; household entitlements and food security; secure
housing in safe locations; and freedom from violence (Enarson 2006 ).
The combination of poverty with gender inequality can be particularly deadly in
a disaster. In the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans in 2005, for example, it
was clear that the poverty that left people more vulnerable to disaster amplifi ed both
gender and race disadvantage. Everywhere in the world, women are the poorest of
the poor. In New Orleans, a city with a poverty rate higher than the national US
average, at the time of Katrina, 15 % of all families lived below the offi cial poverty
line; 41 % of female-headed households with children fell below this line (US
Census Bureau 2004 ). People in poverty are the least likely to have access to good
information ahead of disaster. They are the least likely to have a place they can
evacuate to and stay for days or weeks and are the least likely to have the means to
leave. In the days ahead of Katrina, thousands of people did get out of New Orleans -
almost all of them by car. In New Orleans, as elsewhere, poverty combined with
race and gender inequality to produce a metric of deep disadvantage in terms of
mobility and capacity to escape the looming disaster. Even in a country as awash in
cars as the USA, women are less likely to have a car or access to a car than their
male counterparts, and blacks less likely than whites. One recent study established
that 76 % of white Americans own cars, compared with 47 % of blacks, and 52 %
of Latinos (Raphael and Stoll 2000 ). Although car ownership data by sex is diffi cult
to fi nd (most data are collected by “household”), a recent analysis of car registra-
tions in the USA reveals that 64 % are registered to men and 36 % to women
(TrueCar.Com 2010 ). Poor African American women are among the least likely to
have a car or access to one. It should not have been surprising, then, that poor
African American women comprised the largest share of people trapped in New
Orleans during the hurricane. And yet, this gender dynamic received very little
attention both during and after the storm (Seager 2012 ).
Paying attention to pre-existing social contexts and gender norms does not just
make visible women's special vulnerabilities. During a 1995 week-long heat wave
in Chicago, more than 800 people died. Most of the dead were men - twice as many
men as women died. Deaths occurred primarily in poor minority neighborhoods,
where people didn't have air conditioners, were afraid to leave windows open at
night, were afraid to venture outdoors, and felt isolated. In a post-heat wave