Introduction

This article develops a new perspective on the relation between disaster mitigation and women’s rights by examining these two concepts, other associated concepts, and their critical connection. While there is literature on disaster mitigation per se or women or gender issues in disasters, literature explicitly looking into the relation between disaster mitigation and women’s rights is scarce. Given the explicit literature gap on the issue, the article explores this relation through a critical synthesis of literatures on disaster mitigation, the links between disasters and development, women’s and gender equality issues in disasters and development, and rights history with a focus on women’s rights in disasters. This critical literature synthesis leads to questions about the traditional understanding of disaster mitigation as a unidimensional concept—one separately identified part of the different stages of the disaster cycle—and offers a new way of conceptualizing disaster mitigation by interpreting disasters through the lens of women’s rights and gender equality. This analysis posits disaster mitigation as an overlapping concept and a process that works across the disaster-development continuum and through interventions furthering women’s rights and gender equality, that is, before, during, and after disasters. The discussion conceptualizes disaster mitigation as a dynamic gendered intervention process that furthers gender equalities and women’s rights throughout the disaster-development continuum. This is achieved by interpreting disasters through the varied lenses of “social vulnerability,” “gender inequalities,” “disaster-development continuum,” “resilience building,” “rights-based approaches,” and “women’s rights.” Disaster mitigation is foregrounded as a potential process that furthers women’s rights in disasters and developmental processes.

Rights in the History of Interpretations of Disasters

Early dominant literature on disasters was at odds with the language of rights, which mobilizes emancipatory vocabulary in the interests of excluded and disadvantaged persons. Emancipatory perspectives engage with oppression, unequal social orders, and ways to change them. The early dominant disaster literature, identified through a “natural hazards approach,” considered disasters as natural or extreme hazard “events” that could be mapped and controlled through technological interventions and human adjustments to those hazard scenarios (Burton et al., 1993). Allied social science literature suggested that disasters are major unforeseen events with major impacts on society, such as impairment of essential functions, overwhelming of local capacities to enable recovery, and a need for an external support (Cutter, 2003; Fritz, 1961). Such analysis privileged undertaking of managerial and technical strategies by government and nongovernment actors in disasters to return the essential functions required for the smooth working of the society. Thus, rights or entitlements do not figure in these early conceptualizations of disasters or perspectives on people’s recovery; that is, they make their presence felt through their absences in this discourse.

An alternative interpretation and conception of disasters (Hewitt, 1983) argued that the existing unequal social orders and entrenched social relations affected disaster outcomes and people’s recoveries. People’s responses to risks were shaped by social processes and their everyday, unequal sociopolitical relations in their habitat and with the state. The focus on only technocratic and management solutions did nothing to change the fundamental social forces that shaped people’s unequal resources to respond to and cope with hazards and risks. Rather, such an approach contributed to a more authoritarian, rationalist, technocentric, top-down response, which ultimately sought to disempower the disadvantaged people and consolidate the very unequal power structures that contributed to their chronic vulnerability. To take Hewitt’s logic (Hewitt, 1983) of argument further, the dominant natural hazards and technocratic approach only concealed the rightlessness of certain social groups affected by disasters. These newer theorizations about risks, disasters, and people led to the formulation of a social vulnerability approach to disasters that argued that people’s susceptibility to risk is mediated through social, economic, and political processes of marginalization and unequal development (Susman et al., 1983; Wisner et al., 2004). The interplay of class, gender, age, ethnicity, race, occupation, and patterns of conflict and cooperation show the prevalent social, economic, and cultural differentiation within societal structures at micro levels (Oliver-Smith & Hoffman, 2002). These micro and macro structures, such as the state and its policies and legal frameworks, influence people’s ability to influence and access resources for recovery. Distribution of entitlements within the society—that is, the right to resources that people can access and control—affects the distribution of risks and the ability of affected people to recover. In his path-breaking analysis of famine, Amartya Sen (1983) explained that famines were not an effect of natural hazard–triggered disasters, such as drought, but were caused by the breakdown and failure of entitlements, namely social and legal arrangements that enable people command over food. Sen identified four entitlement failures: land (production of enough food through land ownership), labor (e.g., enough wages earned through labor to buy food), trade (e.g., other household asset that could be traded for food), and social transfers (e.g., state food transfers through which people could access food) (Sen, 1983). The social transfer entitlements are also deemed as the right to social protection, that is, a right of transfer of food resources through cash or noncash food support by the state to the disaster-affected persons (Akerkar et al., 2016). The role of entitlements in averting famine deaths, namely as formal rights in the form of transfer entitlements to the citizenry, is realized through citizens’ social contract with the state (Sen, 2010). Thus, the language of entitlements can be seen as an initiator of the discourse on rights and disasters within the field of disaster studies.

Reconceptualizing Disaster Mitigation

While the nascent entry of rights discourse can be seen through the concept of entitlements and the failures to realize them in disaster and famine discourses, overall, the conception of disasters were (and often still are) offered through an operational lens of “disaster cycle.” Disaster or emergency management is still the main policy and program framework applied by governments and international nongovernmental organizations in their operational work on disasters, which includes immediate rescue, relief, and recovery; disaster preparedness; and mitigation phases (Cutter, 2003; McEntire, 2015). Disaster mitigation involves activities that lead to disaster “risk reduction, loss minimization or the alleviation of potential negative impacts associated with disasters” (McEntire, 2015, p. 4).

The United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction ([UNISDR], 2009) describes disaster mitigation as strategies and measures undertaken for “lessening or limitation of the adverse impacts and related disasters” (p. 19). However, often the focus is on structural measures for risk reduction, including land-use planning or improvements in building standards; for example, making built structures earthquake proof, improving environmental policies, and implementing economic measures (e.g., insurance) that compensate people for their losses (McEntire, 2015; UNISDR, 2009).

However, this focus on disaster mitigation as risk reduction or limiting adverse impacts by focusing on physical or structural measures necessitates a more critical evaluation because it aligns with the dominant mode of interpreting disasters, which is allied with the natural hazards approach. The alternative interpretation of disasters centers people’s differential social vulnerabilities, and the conception of disaster mitigation requires the incorporation of social vulnerability reduction dimensions. This interpretation is recognized in the policy conceptions of disaster risk reduction formulated through the UN Hyogo Framework of Action (HFA 2005–2015) and the Sendai Framework of Action (SFA, 2015–2030). The SFA framework includes the need to eliminate the root causes of these risks, such as poverty, inequality, and climate change, thus highlighting the disaster-development nexus in the making of disasters. The goal for the SFA 2015–2030 is to

prevent new and reduce existing disaster risk through the implementation of integrated and inclusive economic, structural, legal, social, health, cultural, educational, environmental, technological, political and institutional measures that prevent and reduce hazard exposure and vulnerability to disaster, increase preparedness for response and recovery, and thus strengthen resilience.

(UNISDR, 2015, p. 12)

The guiding principles for implementation of the framework indicate that disaster risk reduction requires

empowerment and inclusive, accessible and non-discriminatory participation, paying special attention to people disproportionately affected by disasters, especially the poorest. A gender, age, disability and cultural perspective should be integrated in all policies and practices, and women and youth leadership should be promoted.

(UNISDR, 2015, p. 13)

In line with its goal, which furthers the interpretation of disasters through a disaster-development continuum, the priorities for the SFA include a call to

integrate disaster risk reduction in response preparedness and ensure that capacities are in place for effective response and recovery at all levels. Empowering women and persons with disabilities to publicly lead and promote gender equitable and universally accessible response, recovery, rehabilitation and reconstruction approaches is key. Disasters have demonstrated that the recovery, rehabilitation and reconstruction phase, which needs to be prepared ahead of a disaster, is a critical opportunity to “Build Back Better,” including through integrating disaster risk reduction into development measures, making nations and communities resilient to disasters.

(UNISDR, 2015, p. 21)

The SFA rightly highlights the need to incorporate the social risk reduction dimensions in the disaster-development continuum link. However, a closer look at the SFA shows that it has tenets of techno-managerial and relief-oriented discourse, suggesting that the SFA needs to elaborate on how to further gender equity and social justice (Bondesson, 2019; Zaidi & Fordham, 2021). More generally, the SFA’s conceptualization of disaster risk reduction represents welcome progress and enhances the earlier, unidimensional understanding of disaster mitigation. Historically, mitigation has been viewed as a stage within the disaster cycle or activities taking place prior to the disaster event and focusing only on physical risk reductions. The links made between disasters and development highlight that disasters cannot be treated as singular “events.” Disaster mitigation therefore needs to be reconceptualized as an overlapping concept that puts a spotlight on the need to bring risk and social vulnerability reduction processes into the disaster-development continuum. In other words, aligned with the interpretation of disasters as a result of differential social vulnerabilities, to start with, disaster mitigation should be understood as interventions needed for risk and social vulnerability reduction before, during, and after disasters.

In this relation, the concept of “building back better” in disaster response, recovery, and reconstruction needs to be particularly reframed through nonstructural mitigation means—that is, through interventions that reduce social vulnerabilities and inequalities and rightlessness of women and other socially marginalized groups. The need to treat disasters as opportunities for change of inequalities or effectors for social change dynamics in society goes back many years (Prince, 1920). Bates and Peacock (1987) argued that disasters put stress on social systems and force it to adapt, making some of these changes permanent and sometimes leading to new forms of working within social systems. Crises can have paradoxical effects; they can exacerbate existing inequalities but can also be opportunities for gender transformative change with women taking new roles in the society (Oxfam, 2019). Disasters can lead to disruptions in routines and enable opportunities for women to challenge, exceed, and transgress their traditional gender norms and roles when supported by organizations that give them new skills and resources (Enarson, 1998). Such opportunities for social change are explored and evaluated further through women, equalities, and rights-based approaches in the disaster-development continuum.

Understanding Inequalities Through a Contextual Construct of the Category of “Woman”

Concerns of social and gender justice have been central to feminist literature. The wider social vulnerability approach was furthered by feminist theorization, which highlighted effects of gender inequalities in disasters. This feminist view within the disaster discourse also questioned the notion of the unified subject and suggested that crises affect males and females differently (Akerkar & Fordham, 2017; Enarson, 1998; Enarson & Fordham, 2001; Enarson & Morrow, 1997; Fordham, 2003, 2004; Fothergill, 1998) and emphasized the importance of eliminating the root causes of women’s social vulnerability (Ariyabandhu & Wicremasinghe, 2003; Bhatt, 1998; Yonder et al., 2005).

Gender in intersection with class, caste, ethnicity, race, and disability led to differential impacts in specific historical and social contexts (Kailes, 2007; Marable, 2006; Peacock et al., 1997; Ray-Bennett, 2009; Suar, 2007). This analysis emphasized women’s socially constructed invisibility, which made them more vulnerable before, during, and after the disasters (Enarson & Fordham, 2001; Fordham & Ketteridge, 1998). A lack of awareness of gender issues in decisions made by intervening agencies in a disaster context furthered women’s unpaid workload and marginalized them in the decision-making processes of the agencies that intervened in disasters (Fordham, 2004). Other social constraints, such as the restricted mobility of female-headed households—in some contexts in public spaces—also led to their being left out of humanitarian assistance, thus increasing their vulnerability or chances of better recoveries (Akerkar, 2007; Akerkar & Devavaram, 2015; Bryne & Baden, 1995). LGBT critique has also shown how some groups who do not fit into the gender binary are excluded, face discrimination in disasters, and are exposed to disaster risks in very different ways (Balgos et al., 2012; Gaillard et al., 2017a, 2017b; Pincha & Krishna, 2008). Such theorizing on gender issues has suggested that an unequal social order is largely responsible for the exclusion of women and other marginalized groups.

Binary gender conceptions challenge formulation of the category of “women.” The category “woman” gets its meaning from “gender” construction. In addition, the category of gender and woman can be “discursively” organized, with real effects of subordination in the society; that is, categories through which society organizes its power (Butler, 1990; Scott, 1988). Scott (1986) referred to the symbolic systems in societies that “articulate the rules of social relationships or construct the meaning of [gendered] experience” (p. 1063). This suggests that the category “woman” gets its meaning through contextually articulated societal discourses about the subject woman experiencing particular forms of gendered subordination and discrimination in that context. Such feminist framing thus articulates plural forms of imagining and articulating the subject category “woman” and her emancipations. The subject bearer of the contextual experience is discursively organized as a “woman” of a “class,” “race,” “caste,” “ethnicity,” “marital status,” or “sexuality,” among other markers, rather than a “universal woman” (Akerkar, 1995; Scott, 1986). For example, in the context of Hurricane Katrina, experiences of rightlessness may be analyzed through the lens of “Black women” affected by the hurricane, and in the context of the tsunami in Tamil Nadu, India the experiences of rightlessness may be analyzed through the lens of a female-headed household, rather than a “universal” idea of a “woman.” Gender and disaster literature can thus be seen as highlighting contextual discriminations experienced and articulated by the “woman” in different disaster contexts. This suggests that inequalities and unequal social order distribute gendered entitlements in differential ways in societies, thus distributing vulnerabilities, risks, and capacities to the subject “woman” in different contexts in different ways.

The suggestion that the category “woman” is discursively organized leads to other consequences for conceptions and strategies of disaster mitigation. This means that since the category “woman” is discursively constructed, the discursive articulations made about “woman” in any given disaster and development setting through policies and programs of the state and nonstate actors can be progressive or regressive in their content in their approach to woman in those contexts. The effect of regressive and patriarchal constructions of woman through statist discourses, policies, and practices and the resulting entrenchment of social inequalities in disasters is analyzed in detail in the sections “Recognizing the Paradox of Rights” and “Toward the Politics of Rights” . More generally, this means rightlessness by the “woman” is experienced in disasters via experiences of discrimination and marginalization in recoveries that is affirmed and produced by discriminating social, public, and state discourses, policies, and practices. Countering this requires an alternative progressive discourse and practices that further women’s rights in disasters and development. Affirming social justice in the context of disasters is thus about understanding and questioning the wider and long-term social inequities, contextual women’s rightlessness, and discourses that sustain such inequalities. Disaster mitigation has been highlighted as a process of intervening in the disaster-development continuum and of reducing risks and social vulnerability before, during, and after disasters. Building on this assertion and the discussions of the experiences of discriminations experienced by the subject “woman” in various disaster contexts, disaster mitigation is thus also about questioning and challenging inequalities and affirmation of women’s rights against their marginalization through critical discursive practices. Disaster mitigation must be thus seen as social and discursive interventions that problematize discrimination and marginalization of the subject woman in every context and further women’s equality before, during, and after disasters in this disaster-development continuum.

Disaster Mitigation: Gender Equality, Human Rights, and Women’s Rights

What does it mean to further women’s equality before, during, and after disasters? Disasters are not isolated events and need to be conceived as a part of the disaster-development continuum. This conception begs an engagement with the developmental discourse and interventions in critical ways. Development as an ethical political discourse must make social justice and distributive outcomes central to its undertaking (Seers, 1969; Sen, 1999, 2010). The UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) number 5 addresses gender equality and empowerment of girls and women. It aims to end all forms of discrimination, violence, and harmful practices against women and girls and affirm their participation, equal opportunities, and rights in developmental resources through enforceable policies and legislation. Implementation of several UN human rights and women’s rights covenants, such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) are also implicitly understood as a part of ensuring developmental goals of gender equality, which if implemented robustly should lead to the reduction of vulnerability and risk among girls and women in disasters. In other words, actions for women’s rights and equality affirmation can act as transformative measures that further social justice and reduce disaster vulnerability. As emphasized by Robinson (2006) a “human rights framework gives us legal and normative grounds for empowering the poor [and women] to seek redress” (p. 3).

More generally, this also means rights discourse politicizes the meaning of development, disaster mitigation, and vulnerability reduction processes by addressing unequal power relations in the society (Akerkar, 2005; Gready & Ensor, 2005). Disaster mitigation and vulnerability reduction also emerge as dynamic rather than static processes that can be changed through critical developmental, social, economic, and legal interventions. Sen’s (1983) argument that entitlement failures lead to famines can be extended to other disasters and leads to crucial questions of state responsibility and accountability when natural hazards lead to human suffering due to failure of entitlements of the affected women and men (Akerkar, 2005; Gready & Ensor, 2005). In other words, the rights discourse argues that women and other discriminated groups are made vulnerable and rightless by social, economic, and cultural laws, discourses, and practices before, during, and after disasters. Discrimination in civil and political engagement can lead to lack of participation and voice for women and other groups in disaster response and recovery processes. Key questions include whether pre- and post-disaster mitigation interventions enhance distributive outcomes by questioning discourses and practices of women’s discrimination by enhancing women’s agency (Akerkar, 2005, 2007; Akerkar & Devavaram, 2015). This in turn calls for rights-based approaches in the disaster-development continuum that are committed to furthering the rights of the subject “women” and other marginalized groups.

Rights-Based Approaches in the Disaster Development Continuum

The rights-based approach is often mobilized by nongovernmental organizations or social movements through the vocabulary of state–citizen social contract or relation, wherein the state as a duty bearer has the responsibility of upholding the rights of its citizens, the rights holders. This is reflected through a country’s constitution, which enshrines the rights of its citizens and the principles of human rights to which the country is signatory. The universal human rights discourse gets its mandate through UN-led declarations, covenants, and resolutions on civil, political, social, economic, and cultural rights, as well as those dealing with specific constituencies, such as women’s rights through the UN-led CEDAW. Countries ratify these UN resolutions and are obligated to deliver on them. These UN-led framings of rights and the constitutional rights inform the laws and the responsibilities that the state has toward its citizenship in a country. Although the rights-based approaches are applied in diverse ways by different nongovernmental organizations, such as through legal processes and grassroots mobilizations, the approach holds states accountable to their citizens (Gready & Ensor, 2005).

In the context of disasters and risk reduction, there are no current international laws or UN legal conventions governing these issues, although there have been policy processes set in motion by the UNISDR through the HFA 2005–2015 and SFA 2015–2030. The nation-states that have signed up to these frameworks report to the UNISDR on whether and to what extent they have met their agreed commitments. Several nation-states have developed institutional mechanisms, to implement their commitments, such as national disaster management authorities and allied laws and policies. Similarly, the UN SDGs 2015–2030 outline goals to be achieved by all nation-states, including goal number 5 about achieving gender equality. These policy processes and their achievements are monitored by UN agencies through country reports and thereby develop moral obligations for nation-states to meet them.

Various organizations have made innovative use of these policy frameworks and reoperationalized them from a rights-based perspective. Critical concepts have been operationalized through rights-based language and discourses. For example, in the early 21st century, the concept of resilience building was used in international policy as an integrating concept to link disaster risk reduction, development, and post-disaster recovery work and vision. Initial literature on resilience focused on systems or communities “bouncing back” after disasters, which led to criticism that the conception promoted the status quo rather than change (Twigg, 2009). Such criticism led to new conceptions of resilience, namely as capacities to bounce forward, with an emphasis on the role of change, adaptation, or transformation in social systems to develop resilience, suggesting that disasters should be treated as a potential opportunity for change (Folke, 2006; Manyena, 2006; Manyena et al., 2019; Pelling, 2011).

While the conceptions of resilience are wide ranging, a few international development organizations have specifically incorporated rights-based perspectives and gender justice as central aspects of resilience discourse. For example, Oxfam defines resilience as the “ability of women, men, and children to realize their rights and improve their well-being despite shocks, stresses, and uncertainty” (Jennings & Mantulac, 2016, p. 5). Building resilience means improving people’s well-being by enabling them to realize their rights despite shocks and stress (Jennings & Manlutac, 2016). Action Aid International (Singh et al., 2016) argues that emphasis on resilience cuts across development and humanitarian work and incorporates a rights-based approach and framework. Overcoming silos of risk reduction, development, and humanitarian work, building resilience emphasizes the need for transformations of power relations and gender relations such that marginalized groups are able to challenge the status quo, which requires institutional reform, cultural reform, and behavioral shifts across the society. Building on the transformative resilience literature, Action Aid defines resilience as

the ability of people to recognise, challenge and transform the unjust and unequal power relations that dictate their vulnerability, to adapt positively to changing circumstances, and to mitigate, prepare for and rapidly recover from shocks and stresses such that their wellbeing and enjoyment of human rights is safeguarded.

(Singh et al., 2016, p. 8)

Action Aid particularly argues that women’s rights are disproportionately violated in disasters and supports women’s leadership in resilience efforts (Singh et al., 2016). Rights-based approaches (RBAs) are thus used to mobilize women’s agencies to lead resilience initiatives and challenge unequal power relations in their communities.

In this way, although not legally enforceable, nongovernmental and civil society organizations operationalize the UN-led policy agreements linking disasters and development to engage with inequalities within their societies or to pressure their governments to meet their commitments to the initiatives. This section has broadly discussed the contours of the use of RBA discourses in the disaster-development continuum. The next section develops critical assessment of the use of RBAs and their potential for promoting the emancipatory agenda of furthering women’s rights.

Promoting the Emancipatory Agenda

Recognizing the Paradox of Rights

Enabling Disaster Mitigation and Furthering Women’s Rights

This article has argued for a persuasion of a radical politics for rights that emphasizes the subaltern women’s voice and agency in disaster mitigation processes before, during, and after disasters to overcome the disaster-development divide. This subaltern “woman” is not a “universal woman,” but is an articulation of the contextual experiences of discriminations and marginalization that contests the dominant or hegemonic framing of her rights. As a discourse of power, gender organizes the category “woman” and her experiences of subordination and marginalization in myriad ways that relate to other contextual markers of class, race, ethnicity, marital status, and so on. As a discourse of power, the role of gendered discourses in organizing and perpetuating discrimination needs to be unpacked in every context by intervening organizations. A few corollaries follow this assertion:

Conclusion

The interpretation of disasters has come a long way since the dominant natural hazards approach, challenged by other critical social vulnerability approaches and particularly feminist gender and disaster perspectives. This article reframes the meaning of disaster mitigation to take into account the reality of the disaster-development continuum and particularly the effects of rightlessness of women in those disasters. The current practices of many NGOs entail supply-based humanitarian response and uncritical use of state- and society-authored patriarchal discourse rights, which only goes on to consolidate the oppressive power structures experienced by women in those contexts. Radical politics for change that works with women’s agency to further their rights should underlie all disaster mitigation practices embarked upon in the disaster-development continuum. This makes the relation between the two—disaster mitigation and furthering women’s rights—a virtuous cycle. Disaster mitigation interpreted and undertaken as a dynamic process of discursive, policy, and practical intervention in the disaster-development continuum and furthers women’s rights and gender equality can only reduce disaster risks to women and enable dignified recoveries of women affected by the disasters in that society.

This emphasis on a virtuous cycle calls for synergic responses by country programs in delivering the UN-led SFA targets and the SDGs. The SFA aims to increase capacities of countries to respond to disasters through improved national and local disaster relief and reduction plans and strategies, which can only work when these countries’ plans and strategies also align with the SDGs related to furthering women’s equality. It is this synergy of vision for a socially just and equal society that must inform the relation between disaster mitigation and furthering women’s rights.