In the early 1940s, as World War II raged across Europe and the Pacific, fears of the ‘changing role’ of women in post-conflict society began to surface in newspapers around the world.
“The question which is being raised by the after-the-war planners is how to get the women back in the home when peace comes, especially those who are more efficient than men,” a 1942 article in the Inwood Herald queried.
During this time, women were entering new roles en masse to support the war effort; working in factories and docks, farms, hospitals, and banks. They repaired machines and made uniforms, weapons and ammunition, trucks and tanks. They cooked and fed communities, raised children, and cared for family members. Women flew aircraft and served as nurses on the frontlines; they became welders, mechanics, and train drivers.
Such a disruption to existing gender norms was met with fear, with one newspaper bemoaning the “new breed of women,” asking, “what kind of women will rise from the seething cauldron of Europe after the war? What will guerilla warfare do to women who have reversed women’s age-old role of giving life?”
More than 80 years on, the role of women in conflict and disaster remains infused with the same gender norms and barriers that diminish, harm, and devalue women in times of crisis.
In a paradox, two seemingly incompatible realities exist within disaster and conflict settings.
The first reality is that women are disproportionately impacted by such events; for example, women and children account for more than 75 per cent of the refugees and displaced persons at risk from war, famine, persecution and natural disaster (source: United Nations Population Fund).
This has spawned a range of myths about women; notably, that they are merely passive spectators, viewed solely as victims in disaster and conflict. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. The disproportionate impact experienced by women in the face of conflict and disaster is due to a multitude of factors; none of which include being passive, incapable, or weak.
The second reality is that, while women are key to overcoming disaster and conflict and play a vital and undervalued role in society, rigid structural barriers and gender norms simultaneously dictate and diminish women’s role in disaster settings.
Why? These norms are imposed on women and shape their basic survival capabilities. All over the world, women and girls are overwhelmingly tasked with caring responsibilities; notably taking care of other children, the elderly, or family members. Such responsibility places an increasing burden on women tasked with, for example, evacuating a disaster area while simultaneously responsible for the health and safety of her family.
Women also have less autonomy over their own health, education, and finances. They’re less likely than men to have access to a bank account or financial institutions, and less likely to hold sovereign over decisions regarding their own healthcare. According to the World Bank, only around half of women in vulnerable contexts reported participating in decisions about their own healthcare, with husbands tending to make decisions alone about the healthcare for their wives.
Gender norms also often dictate women’s education and disaster preparedness. For example, four times as many women than men were killed in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and India during the 2004 tsunami, because men were taught how to swim and climb trees at young ages, while women were not (source: Oxfam).
Women are pivotal in every aspect of community life and survival, often the first to respond in meeting the needs of their families and community members in crises. Their diverse skills and capabilities, including, but not limited to, caring responsibilities, are unpaid and grossly undervalued. Despite this, women are underrepresented in decision-making—not only in household settings, but locally and globally—resulting in a humanitarian system that is exclusionary and unaccountable to women.
In addition, women are often excluded from peace negotiations and conflict prevention talks, despite ample research indicating that peace agreements brokered by women have a substantially higher degree of success and longevity. This exclusion not only perpetuates gender inequality but undermines the potential for lasting peace and stability in conflict-affected regions.
In fact, according to the United Nations, gender equality is a superior indicator of a state’s peacefulness compared to traditional metrics such as democracy, religion or GDP; with research revealing that peace agreements brokered with women’s participation are 35 percent more likely to last at least 15 years.
Women—with their extensive knowledge of communities, ability to mobilise diverse groups, social and technical abilities in managing natural environmental resources, and caring responsibilities—play a critical, often unacknowledged role in conflict and disaster preparedness, prevention, response, resilience and recovery. Acknowledging and formalising their participation is key to strengthening disaster resilience of communities and preventing recurring conflict.
Disaster recoveries are opportunities to build back in a way that breaks down the constraints faced by women, allowing for a greater centreing of women’s skills and experiences. This will have a positive ripple effect throughout communities because, when a woman speaks, she speaks for others too.
When women are healthy and educated, their family will be too. And when women earn an income, they invest in the health and education of their children and families too. All around the world, women reinvest significant amounts of income back into their families to overcome poverty, conflict and disaster.
That’s why this year, CARE Australia’s Her Circle campaign is spotlighting the vital role of women as leaders and pillars of their communities in times of conflict and disaster, and explores the ‘multiplier effect’ – the concept that, when one woman rises, she brings four others with her.
CARE Australia’s ‘multiplier effect’ is founded on decades of global research that shows, even though women are the most impacted by poverty, conflict, and disaster, they are also the key to overcoming it. That’s a powerful multiplier.