Gender mainstreaming in disaster reduction: Why and how?

The significant losses in human life and livelihoods, the destruction of economic and social infrastructure and damage to the environment caused by disasters in the past decade has increased the necessity for proper disaster reduction and risk management strategies. A disaster is shown as a combination of a trigger agent and vulnerabilities. Since vulnerabilities are the dependant component of a disaster, they should be managed and minimised in order to reduce disasters. Disaster reduction policies and measures, which ensure a decrease in vulnerabilities, need to be formed and implemented to achieve a sustainable and consistent plan of disaster management. Since women are more vulnerable in a disaster, their needs and concerns should be widely integrated into risk reduction plans and procedures from both perspectives of women as beneficiaries and decision makers. Gender mainstreaming is considered an important element in disaster reduction policy making to integrate a gender equality perspective in all policies at all levels. Gender mainstreaming in disaster reduction refers to promoting awareness about gender equity and equality, to help reduce the impact of disasters and to incorporate gender analysis in disaster management, risk reduction and sustainable development to decrease vulnerability. This paper reviews literature on disaster reduction and gender mainstreaming to emphasise why gender mainstreaming has become a necessity in disaster reduction attempts and to highlight the ways in which it can be achieve

Effect of attitudes towards creating women managers in the construction industry

The paper attempts to explore the issues associated with peoples’ attitudes towards under-representation of women at senior managerial positions in the construction industry through a literature review. The construction industry holds an image of a rough natured industry associated with difficult working conditions. The attitudes and stereotypes of society regarding managing work and resources in that hard environment - by a woman, normally expected to be the heart of the family scene, with social responsibilities and in the traditional motherly role - are preventing the promotion of women managers in the industry. Since attitudes are the people's biases or tendencies that influence their response to situations, activities or the people, changing attitudes can be used as a powerful device for altering the pattern of thinking and human behaviour. The construction industry will benefit with more women managers if the unfavourable attitudes regarding the promotion of women managers can be changed

Mainstreaming women into disaster reduction decision making in the built environment: Research methodological perspectives

The role played by the built environment in determining the casualties and monetary costs of disasters emphasises the need of reducing its disaster vulnerabilities to achieve a disaster resilient built environment. The decision-making process in the built environment thus requires integration with disaster risk reduction. This integration further requires identifying women?s specific needs and concerns related to disaster risk reduction in order to reduce women?s higher disaster vulnerabilities. A research aiming at mainstreaming women?s needs and concerns in to decision making process in the built environment to reduce their vulnerabilities is being carried out and this paper focuses on elaborating its research methodology. The methodology of the research will be discussed under three main sections in the paper. The sections will be, philosophical worldviews, strategies of enquiry and the research methods of the study. Having identified the study as a social research and believing in pragmatism the research takes an interpretivist philosophical stance and selects its research strategy as case studies. The paper explains the philosophical positioning of the research and its case study design in detail while justifying the suitability of the methodological selections of the research through various literature. The latter part of the paper will illustrate the choice of data collection and analysis methods with their suitability to the context of this particular research

Social vulnerability and disaster risk reduction needs: perspectives of women

Integration of disaster risk reduction needs and experiences of different groups in the community with the built environment is significant to achieve disaster resilience. It facilitates identifying the nature of disaster vulnerabilities within a particular community leading to achieve disaster risk reduction more effectively. Women‘s needs and experiences are prominent in this context since women have been identified as a highly vulnerable group to disasters. Women‘s higher disaster vulnerability is typically determined by their social roles and responsibilities. Their responsibilities over production and reproduction frequently expose them to different conditions in disasters with varying vulnerabilities. This paper is based on a doctoral research that aims to investigate how women‘s knowledge, experiences and needs and concerns in relation to disaster risk reduction can be identified and integrated with disaster risk reduction in the built environment. A comprehensive literature review has been carried out in order to explore various aspects of social vulnerability, disaster implications on women, women‘s needs in disaster risk reduction and the means of needs capturing and integration. Participatory methods such as public consultations are suggested as the most effective ways of capturing disaster risk reduction needs of community women in literature whilst the significant role of construction process and people involved in it is highlighted for integrating the needs with the built environment

Enhancing capacities for disaster mitigation and reconstruction in the built environment: a case study from Sri Lanka

Throughout the recent decades, natural and man-made disasters have demonstrated the fragility of the built environment and its vulnerability to hazards. The destruction of the built environment caused by disasters impedes the regular functioning of the society while hindering all the other activities due to its strong linkages with other sectors. This emphasises the need of a disaster resilient built environment. Capacity enhancement within different sectors in the society such as governments, institutions and communities, in relation to the built environment enables to identify constraints and to plan and manage construction activities of the built environment effectively, efficiently and sustainably. Identifying capacity gaps in the context of disaster mitigation and reconstruction in the built environment is vital to identify any required capacity enhancement. In this context, this paper discusses such capacity gaps in Sri Lanka through a literature review. Sri Lanka is commonly prone to natural hazards like floods, cyclones, landslides, and droughts and has experienced low-frequency but high impact disasters also such as the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004. The paper identifies the capacity gaps in different sectors in the country such as national and local governments, non state actors and the private sector, local communities, policy and regulatory environment and human resource development in relation to disaster mitigation and reconstruction in the built environment. Problems in the regulatory structure, deficiencies in necessary laws and regulations including problems in their implementation, and lack of required resources and skills have been identified as the major capacity gaps in the paper

Meliorating women's representation within leadership positions in the UK construction industry

The construction industry in the North West of England is one of the region's largest industries and fundamental to all other economic activities. However, a scarcity of women in leadership positions in construction has persisted despite their increasing numbers in construction training. The lack of women leaders in construction has been a concern for many years, attracting government and industry wide attention. This issue has been made more prominent recently due to the potential managerial skills shortage facing the industry. Hence, a research project was carried out in order to study the underlying reasons for the scarcity of women in leadership positions in the construction industry, and to discover ways to improve the current position of women leaders in construction, with a particular emphasis on the North West of England.The research project conducted both critical literature review and case studies in order to understand the role of female leaders, the barriers faced by women in leadership positions, the present status of organisational policies and facilities and their suggestions for further improvement in construction and to provide effective practice guidelines. This paper presents the overall findings from this project and the recommendations to improve the current position of women leaders in construction. Although, the recommendations to organisations are mainly focusing on developing women leaders it recognises the importance of gender mainstreaming to facilitate all employees? career within the organisatio

Role of women leaders in the UK construction industry and their career barriers

The issue regarding lack of women leaders in construction has been a prominent concern for many years because women in mainstream management reduces potential managerial skills shortage in the industry and increases women’s interest for construction related occupations. This paper is based on a study, which was designed to identify the role of women in leadership positions in the UK construction industry and the barriers confronting their careers. A literature review has been carried out followed by four case studies that were developed around four female leaders in the industry in order to identify the role and the barriers confronting them. Results of this study revealed that role of women leaders in construction is yet to be improved both in terms of number of leaders and the significance of their role. However, the findings of the case studies show that the majority of women leaders do not find problems in their leadership ability and the recognition which is received, however working in a site environment brings additional inconveniences to women in performing their role as leaders. Further the study revealed that women leaders in construction face career barriers which prevent them from advancing towards leadership positions. The results from the case studies indicate that the task of balancing family and work commitments, childcare problems and old boys networks are the most common barriers encountered by women in leadership positions in construction