The Role of Women in Disaster Risk Reduction in Bangladesh: An Empirical Study on Waterlogging in DND Project Area

Abstract

Bangladesh is a vulnerable country because of its distinctive socio-economic and physical characteristics. Every year near about 10 million people are affected directly or indirectly because of living in climatic vulnerable countries. Historically Bangladesh lies to the threat ended categories of land and natural hazards. However, natural disaster causes uneven vulnerabilities for both men and women. Waterlogging is one of the disasters that causes serious crisis upon human livelihood patterns. It also creates challenges upon human daily living condition. We faced various kinds of vulnerability because of lacking sufficient purred drinking water and balanced food. Waterlogging sometimes continues from a day to several months. Human life become tough because of employment opportunities, proper communication system and so on. Waterlogging also interrupts regular activities of the educational institutions and damages agricultural crops. Likewise, all other natural disasters waterlogging leads to equal damage in the nature but the burden of copping with disaster, vulnerabilities and mitigation process lies mostly on women’s shoulder is known as engendering disaster. This study indicates that during disaster women are responsible to take care of their family members (e.g., arranging food for their family members, nursing injured people, special care for aged people and children, cooking for family members, collecting drinking water from distant places, etc.). The broad purpose of this study is to address women’s strategic roles and indigenous coping mechanisms in reducing vulnerabilities induced by waterlogging in the study area. Again, the specific objectives of the study include exploring consequences of waterlogging on women, addressing, women’s role in reducing risk in the context of economic and social vulnerability, identifying the gender aware steps to reduce the negative impacts of waterlogging on women, identifying the women’s role in disasters preparedness including reconstruction, rehabilitation and resilience and addressing strategies of sustainable disaster risk reduction.

The conceptual framework of the study indicates that, the higher the vulnerability of women, the lower the adaptation and thus existence of waterlogging situation persists. On the other hand, the lower the access to decision making both inside and outside family, health care service, education, income the higher the adaptation and the outcome is the prolonged vulnerability of waterlogging. The current study followed the triangulation of qualitative and quantitative method. The ‘universe of units’ for this study for quantitative data were only females who have experienced and affected by waterlogging. A semi structured questionnaire was used in this study as tool for collecting quantitative data from 400 females from four villages under the DND embankment area in Narayanganj district. Furthermore, six FGDs, 25 case studies and six KII have been conducted to gather information about the nature of vulnerabilities, coping mechanisms followed by women role played by women to mitigate vulnerabilities and problems encountered by women effective as effective managers. The Monthly income ranged between: BDT 1000- 10,000 plus and the expenditure incurred by the respondents ranged between: BDT 1000 and 10,000 plus. The housing pattern of the respondents of the study area shows that most of the respondents lived in semi-pakka houses. Over 70% of the respondents found illiterate. However, the majority of the respondents (75%) were housewives. Findings of the study also show that peak season of waterlogging is between the months of May-October and according to the respondents it continues from 7-120 days based on extreme climatic variability and weather condition (e.g., heavy rain). Findings of this study has revealed that women’s vulnerability enhances due to unequal access to basic services, like access to income and related opportunities, improve health care service, access to proper sanitation, dual work burden and non-recognition of their contribution and also socio-cultural barriers to participate in disaster and reconstruction processes. Women become sufferer of domestic brutality and sexual aggravation and sometimes, under compulsion get themselves engaged in prostitution to maintain their family livelihoods in absence of earning male members. However, the traditional social structure and patriarchal societal norms made maximal women of the survey area worst victims of waterlogging as the findings confirms. As the findings suggest, the women rarely used any indigenous coping mechanisms on their own. They occasionally assist their male family members in undertaking actions to ensure their survival. Because of the severity of the situation, the majority of respondents (59.2%) indicated their coping techniques were ineffective. Furthermore, the findings reveal that, in normal circumstances, 15.8% of women can make decisions both within and beyond their families. The remaining women reported that they were unable to perform their leadership roles both within and outside the house. In contrast, the majority of respondents (90.5%) were able to play a decision-making role during a disaster. The study's findings indicated several immoral behaviors, such as politicization, land encroachment, and unlawful buildings in wetland areas. Industries were established on agricultural land, and industrial waste was poured down the drain, causing the natural flow of water to be interrupted. In this study the qualitative in-depth findings complemented and supplemented the quantitative findings. The recommendations and strategies include for future research placed in the dissertation have been extracted from the suggestions and observations during field research.