Socio–cultural Factors Influencing Women to be more vulnerable in Natural Disasters: A Qualitative Review on Tamil Nadu state

Abstract

South Asia is one of the most vulnerable areas of an increasingly disaster-impacted world, with floods, droughts cyclones and earthquakes causing several casualties and disrupting lives and livelihoods every year. India is one of the most vulnerable countries to natural disasters (Gokhale, 2008). The country has faced a number of natural disasters in the last decade which have claimed hundreds thousands of precious lives and heavy economic losses. It has been observed that more than half of the victims in the past disasters were women. Yet the impacts of disasters are not equally distributed across the peoples of the region. Women and men experience disaster differently, and their needs in the aftermath of disaster are often differ. Women are especially hard-hit by the social impacts of environmental disasters. Existing inequalities are the root cause for women’s disaster vulnerability. Global forces and social changes placing more people at greater risk of disaster also disproportionately impact women specially in Indian context. Highly vulnerable women have specific needs and interests before, during, and after disasters. Women’s socialposition in the society makes them more vulnerable to natural hazards, they are not helpless victims. Women are particularly vulnerable because they have fewer resources in their own right. They have no place in decision - making systems and they suffer traditional, routine and gratuitous gender-biased oppression. By virtue of their lower economic and social status, women tend to be more vulnerable to disasters.