Rescuer, decision maker, and breadwinner: Women’s predominant leadership across the post-Wenchuan earthquake efforts in rural areas, Sichuan, China

Abstract

Community engagement in disaster risk reduction activities assists women to discover and build their capacity for leadership before, during, and after disaster. In the study of the entire process after an extreme event, previous research has been scarce in the examination of women of different ages’ capacities of engagement, leadership, and resilience. Developed during 10 years of ongoing research after the Wenchuan earthquake, this paper employs qualitative research methodology that scrutinizes women’s leadership at different stages of their lifespans during all the post-disaster stages (emergency rescue, short-term reconstruction, and long-term recovery and mitigation) that took place after the Wenchuan earthquake, in the rural areas of Sichuan Province, China. This paper discovers that (1) during the emergency rescue stage, women became rescuers augmenting and supporting the urgent response; (2) during the short-term reconstruction stage, women served as decision makers guiding the reconstruction of housing and communities; and (3) during the long-term recovery and mitigation stage, many women took on the role of breadwinner, managing the family livelihood and long-term development. From the perspective of built environment, this paper argues that women’s leadership in managing existing and obtaining new resources (internal and external), in parallel effort alongside the official missions, not only strengthened the men’s dominant aftermath efforts, but also promoted gender equity engagement in post-disaster reconstruction and recovery as well as powerfully advanced resilience capacity at individual, family, and community levels.