How Can Promoting Women’s Participation (And Agency) and Responding to Their Needs Improve Disaster Risk Reduction? Case From Post-Disaster Reconstruction (Operations and Measures) in the Philippines and Sri Lanka

For gender-responsive disaster risk reduction (DRR), the most essential step tobe taken might be the translation of DRR into an opportunity to transform unequalgender relations which are root causes of women’s vulnerability and exclude themfrom decision-making processes for DRR. Women and other marginalized groups ofpeople are often regarded as more vulnerable to a risk of disasters because of theirlimited access to resources and decision-making power, necessary for coping withdisasters. However, they are not helpless victims or passive beneficiaries, but activeagents for DRR, if they are evaluated from non-gender-bias lens and given properopportunities. In this light, it is essential for the government and externalorganizations to promote the agency of women and other marginalized groups ofpeople, while reducing their risk, within relevant interventions. In reality, however,most of relevant projects have not necessarily addressed the transformation of genderrelations, and concentrated on daily-based needs of women survivors. Based on thisrecognition, we conducted field research in the Philippines and Sri Lanka in 2015.Drawing on the cases of JICA’s and other organizations’ past and on-going relevantprojects, we analyze how external interventions contributed to changes in genderrelations, as well as the vulnerability and coping capacity of women and men.Senior Researcher, Japan Development Service (JDS) Co, Ltd., Tokyo. (nonoguchi@jds21.com.)Senior Advisor on Gender and Development, Japan International Cooperation Agency(JICA), Tokyo. (Tanaka.Yumiko@jica.go.jp)Findings from the research show that women’s agency was hardly addressed as a mainobjective of most of the projects, and women tended to be utilized as good mothersand care-takers based on stereotyped gender division of roles. Instead, someoutstanding interventions to challenge for the transformation of gender ed division ofroles have led to women’s active involvement not only in community-based DRR, butother community activities.