From women's needs to women's rights in disasters

Abstract

Writing after a major Australian flood, an observer noted that women’s concerns after the flood were ‘‘an extreme version of what they did before the flood’’ (Dobson, 1994, p. 11). Child care, domestic labor, employment and community work all increased, as did violence against women and strain on caregiving networks. ‘‘Human relationships were laid bare and the strengths and weaknesses in relationships came more sharply into focus.’’ As violation of women’s rights is also more stark when catastrophic events transform physical and social worlds, we make a practical and a political case for explicitly addressing gender equality in the Treaty on human rights to disaster assistance proposed by Wisner and others in the preceding papers.