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Introduction:

Flood is a common phenomenon in Bangladesh. Flood related crises have a gender dimension and affect women, the silent gender, more than men, who have the least capacity to deal with the situation for a variety of cultural, economical, historical, political and social reasons. Floods hit women harder, not just because they are physically weaker, but because of their reproductive capacity, physical responsibility for children and vulnerable socio-economic status. The patriarchal social structure and norms, gendered economics and gendered culture of Bangladesh, underpinned by religious traditions restrict the mobility of women during floods. Wider household responsibilities of women like food processing and cooking, cleaning, collecting water and fuel, bearing and rearing children looking after livestock and income generation also become much more difficult to perform under flood conditions. This article is attempted to highlight how women become more vulnerable by their social status, both during and after the full impact of floods and also the strategies adopted by flood victim women, which are crucial for the household survival.

Flood and its causes:

The origins of floods in Bangladesh are diverse. Floodwater may come from three main sources:

 Rivers  Rainfall  Sea

Three together or independently, may all generate more water that can’t be drained quickly from the land. However, the specific causes of floods vary from region to region. Several explanations have been addressed here:

 Confluence of the major rivers  High monsoon rainfall  Rise of sea level  Siltation of rivers  Flood control measures  Deforestation  Construction of Farakka barrage and others

The last three causes, flood control measures, deforestation and the construction of Farakka barrage, are not only due to natural environmental factors but also to social factors.

Flood control measures and women:

In Bangladesh embankments have been used as a traditional flood control measure since long time. However, a number of studies and reports have pointed out the negative consequences of Flood Control and Drainage (FCD) and Flood Control, Drainage and Irrigation (FCDI) projects: the benefits of these projects were not planned. Because such projects are often not based on the nature of the flood plain, they do not prevent flood but rather increase flood losses. Many embankments have had a negative effect on river regimes, land formation, agriculture and fisheries and on the overall environment. Researchers have pointed out that any step to control flooding should emphasize both the structural and non-structural methods. They have discussed the problems of floods and the negative consequences upon the environment, farmers (men), and fisheries and on many other aspects of life in Bangladesh. However, they have ignored the problems of women. There has been almost no discussion of the differential impact of flooding upon men and women and very little about its impact upon people in different socio-economic categories. Policy makers, however, have only recently started to think about the way in which women might be involved in different activities from men and have different experiences of flooding from men, They have agreed that women’s activities should be ‘visible’ in the development sector and therefore, should be integrated with development activities in the water sector (The Fourth Five Year Plan, 1995). There are only a few studies (e. g. Adnan, 1990; Hanchett, 1992) which briefly consider the situation of women during floods. FAP 14’s gender study was based on a few case studies of female-headed households and was not compared with men’s response.

Problems faced by women during floods:

During floods women face different types of problems. For example:

 Women suffer from lack of food, clothing and shelter during floods. Owing to their lack of resources, poor women face greater problems than women in middle and rich households. They suffer from shortages of food and other essentials, resulting in increasing prices and a consequent decline in purchasing power. They often have to eat unusual food and adjust consumption patterns of this.

 Unemployed men often sit idle or move elsewhere leaving their household members behind during floods. It is women, the household-based workers, who have to take responsibility for protecting their houses, children and other members of the family, livestock and belongings.

 Traditional gender specific work, such as carrying water, cooking, caring for children and animals become too difficult for women during flood conditions. Especially gender-assigned tasks like procuring food and providing drinking water, storing fuel and child care are such that women have to bear more physical burden of coping than men do.

 Women’s assets such milch cows, poultry, trees, kitchen and utensils are particularly vulnerable to flood.

 Domestic violence also increases during floods. Husbands beat their wives and children when food-supply run out in flood-stricken households.

 Many women often become unwilling to go to flood shelters because of the Muslim culture ‘purdah’ which means that women should not show themselves to unrelated men.

 During floods poor widow women confine to their houses for many days and have to drink flood water as they have neither the physical strength to reach tube wells, nor the economic means to hire a boat to collect clean water.

 Bangladeshi women wear long 'Shari', which hinders their movement from one place to another during floods. It often entangles in fixed debris and limits the speed of evacuation. Again, poor women with only one Shari are often oblige to remain in wet cloth for most of the days for the lack of private space and to dry off.

 Victim women often don’t have cloths to come out to take relief. Again, many women lose their breast-feeding infants in flood and suffer from puffed breast pain. There also happen cases of miscarriage which don’t get proper medication during floods. Pregnant and lactating women suffer from malnutrition i.e. lack of vitamin A, iodine and iron deficiencies, which result in eye diseases, night blindness, anemia, goiter etc.

 In flood shelters women face several problems, which are related to their gender identity. For example, it becomes impossible for women to disregard their inhibition and go to latrines, which are open to all. They often have to wait till dark/night to ensure privacy to response the calls by nature, even changing the clothes/sanitary pad with menstrual blood.

 While distributing relief in shelters, women are often pushed down and left behind in the rush by men. Again, child care, illness and conservatism keep many women away from taking relief goods. Women also give part of their food ration to their children consequently denying themselves the opportunity to maintain their strength and support their families.

 Women who are in their own for whatever reason, whether they are single, widowed, abandoned, unaccompanied, lone heads of households or who have been separated from male family members by the chaos of the flood situations, often become victim of sexual violence in flood shelters.

 Women are further vulnerable to the secondary impacts of floods due to socio-cultural and economic factors. When resources such as temporary shelter, fresh water, food and medicines are distributed, women are again marginalized. For example, in many cases women are unable to make decisions about whether loans should be secured to rebuild homes or to purchase crop seeds or other means to generate an income such as the purchase of a boat for transporting goods.

Coping mechanisms of women during floods:

Floods affect both women and men but the burden of coping with flood falls heavily on women. The tasks women perform before, during and after floods, the problems they face and the coping mechanisms they adopt are related to women’s gender identity. Women in poorer categories often act as men do in making platforms, cutting bamboo, making bamboo bridges protecting crops and livestock and engaging in income generating activities. On the other hand, men usually remain more restricted to their gender-assigned activities. Some of the coping mechanisms of women have been highlighted here. Women and water collection:

The collection of water during floods causes great problems for women. Women are usually responsible for collecting and storing water. During floods tube-wells, the most common source of pure drinking water in Bangladesh, go under water and poor women have to take considerable risks to procure drinking water from great distances. They have to walk through chest-high water or swim to collect fresh or clean water. Again, they have not enough fuel to boil water or fitciri to purify it with alum. However, they help each other to get pure drinking water from different sources.

Sale of women’s assets:

The sale of assets is a common way for rural households to survive any crisis. Non-productive assets like milking cows or goats, jewellery or household items cannot usually produce a continuous income as land or cattle but they can easily be converted to cash and are therefore the first to be disposed off to meet the immediate needs of family survival. These assets usually belong to women, and they are often their only assets. They are sold, or mortgaged by their husbands to repay loans, to educate sons or to maintain the livelihood of the households. Both women and men resist changing their status from farmer to landless as long as they have other options to cope with crisis. Most women don’t have own valuable assets as men do. Even if they have some assets they are considered ‘less valuable’ or ‘non-productive’. However, women’s ‘non-productive’ assets become more ‘productive’ when they are disposed off during floods. Women’s assets are used to meet the immediate needs of the households during floods when men’s assets are kept for the future.

Women and food preparation:

During floods there is a great difference in the kind of food, the amount and the frequency of food preparation and the sources of food among women in different socio-economic categories. The food supplies of the poor, undernourished and malnourished at the best of times, are further reduced during the floods and it is women who have the responsibility for adjusting the household food consumption. Women’s work is closely related with agricultural production, family food and income generation and that is why the burden of food shortage falls upon them.

Most of the poor households don’t have a reliable and stable source of food during floods. Women in these categories play a vital role in acquiring food from many sources, some of which are totally different from flood-free sources. When there is a shortage they try to manage food through their own efforts by gathering edible or wild plants and small amounts of low quality food such as rotten or discarded vegetables or accepting rice gruel from better-off women. Destitute and landless women maintain their livelihood by a hand-to-mouth existence. During floods the normal pattern of food consumption in the household changes. The price of staple food items becomes so high that it goes beyond the purchasing power of the poor. So, they often cook khesari or kalai dal (kind of inferior pulse), mania or cheer paddy, which they consider to be animal food, curry with fen (rice gruel) and chhatu (flour normally made of barley or chickpea or maize), kura (the red powdery coating of rice under the husk), lumps of flour burnt in the fire, one handful of rice with lots of water and chili, fried broken bits of grain and different aquatic plants. It is also evident that both women and men in poorer categories suffer from food shortages and women commonly sacrifice their own meals for their husbands and children.

Women and common village resources: During floods women become undernourished subsisting on a lean diet of vegetables, creepers and herbs. Their dependence on food from the common land increases greatly. When men fail to earn any money, they become helpless and do not feel it incumbent upon them to find alternative source of food for their families. Women, on the other hand, are much more capable than men of collecting food for families. They usually collect variety of food items from village common land like Shapla (the stem of the water lily) which women use as a major food item and is often mixed with others like kolmi shak (arum leaves) or kochumukhi (wild arum).

Women and family health care:

There are some general flood-diseases, such as, diarrhea, viral fever, jaundice, skin diseases, conjunctivitis and swelling of limbs. It is evident that without any healthcare facilities from government or other organizations during floods, it is women who provide health care for the sick. Only women have knowledge about certain medicinal trees and they use herbs, roots and barks to cure family members from different types of diseases. Poorer women take risks to collect medicinal herbs from distant places during the floods despite purda restrictions. Men, on the other hand, rarely do such work because providing herbal treatment or nursing is not their gender-assigned role. Men in poorer categories also do not have the resources to get modern treatment. However, most women in the poorer categories, despite their own sickness and other activities, try their best to cure sick family members themselves in order to avoid the cost of modern treatment.

Women and social network:

With little or no support from the government during floods, the women of poor households sick help from their social networks. Such support mainly comes from their own and that of their husbands’ kin and sometimes from patrons and neighbors. Women are able to get more support from such relationships than men. Relatives and neighbors provide shelter, lend food, supply loans with little or no interest, provide temporary employment and help with money, labor or materials to rebuild houses after floods. Men, on the other hand, do not show such ability to provide for their households. Borrowing small things or food is not a man’s responsibility and asking for help is often considered below their dignity.

Recommendations:

During floods where people as a whole are vulnerable, women are more vulnerable as they bear the burden of managing the survival of the household. Therefore, special attention should be given on after-flood rehabilitation program for women. For example:

 There should be more female volunteers. In the case of major floods, male volunteers can not adequately meet women’s needs.

 Women relief workers face higher security risks and obstructive ness from local male leaders and government officials when trying to carry out their work. More women volunteers should be available to form a strong group, able to overcome these problems collectively.

 Female doctors and nurses should be included in the volunteer team, alongside a male medical team. Emergency medicine and equipment should be available to cope with women’s needs. For example, many women lost their breast-feeding infants during floods. Pumps to express breast milk must be available, in order to avoid serious infection and debilitating pain. Equipment and medication is needed to handle the inevitable miscarriages.

 Poor women generally know fewer languages. So, local volunteers are needed to overcome language problems, in order to get access to the women more easily and to understand their specific needs.

 During relief distribution women should be given first priority, and a separate distribution line needs to be organized for them as they have the additional responsibility for children.

 In particularly conservative areas women may need house-to-house distribution as they face social obstacles to come to the distribution line to compete in the struggle for food supplies, elbowing and pushing, with men.

 As women must be fully clothed to go out to get food, clothing is an essential part of emergency relief.

Conclusion:

The inclusion of gender perspective in the study of flood is very pertinent and justified considering the context of Bangladesh. During floods where people as a whole are vulnerable, women become more vulnerable who bear the burden of managing the survival of household under crisis. Therefore, for effective flood management programs to be conceived and implemented successfully, gender specific awareness must be fully realized and accounted for. Since many women become disoriented and threatened by the loss of their homes, flood management policies need to be sensitive and aware of the meaning and significance of home and the implications for dealing with female flood victims. To reduce the vulnerability of women during floods specific programs should be devised and implemented that raise the awareness of women to the risks they face and also the range of adjustments that they can make. Such programs also need to be culturally and socially sensitive. Because of women’s significant contributions to their households’ survival during floods, their activities need to receive attention in government planning.

Bibliography:

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Reardon, Geraldine (1993) Women and the Environment, Oxfam, UK.

Jahan, Roushan; Salahuddin, Khaleda; Environment and Development: Gender Islam, Mahmuda; Banu, Nilufar; Perspective, Women for Women, Dhaka. Islam, Mohsena (1995)