Gender and social inclusion in disaster risk reduction and management: Key learning and effective practices

Resilience to natural hazards varies widely within and between populations. People living in the same area affected by the same hazard event will experience it differently depending on their specific vulnerabilities and capacities. The social inequalities which drive differential resilience vary based on the norms of a given context, but result in resources being harder for some people to reach and use than others.

These inequalities are often invisible in traditional data, and therefore the needs of the most vulnerable are not addressed in disaster risk reduction and management policy and practice. The impacts of disasters therefore reinforce and worsen existing inequalities as already vulnerable people are left further and further behind.

This presentation will focus on new learning about the relationship between gender and social vulnerabilities and resilience to natural hazard-related disasters in a range of contexts with three key aims:

• To share key learning about differential disaster resilience and requirements of early warning and disaster risk management implementation
• To explore key tools which have been piloted, tested, and developed to improve knowledge and understanding of resilience
• To discuss effective and practical ways to apply these tools going forward in research, policy, and practice.

The presentation will draw on experiences and findings from projects conducted in the Philippines, Bangladesh, Malawi, Nepal, and Dominica to research gender and social inclusion in relation to early warning systems, disaster preparedness and response, and disaster risk financing.

The session will examine the drivers of social inequalities and their impacts relating to risk knowledge, monitoring and warning, communication and dissemination, and response capability, sharing examples of the different needs, considerations, and priorities relating to early warning and disaster risk management within communities.

We’ll then explore approaches to data layering and our Missing Voices methodology as key tools to identify and understand factors, including intersectional factors, influencing social and economic resilience to natural hazards.