material (work) and moral (respectability). Women’s domestic responsibilities and cultural expectations for
their modesty can make them especially vulnerable to extreme weather events, particularly in the case of
“hydro-meteorological” disasters such as floods or storm surges (Spring 2006). A number of material and
moral economic factors combined to make Bangladeshi women especially vulnerable when the waters rose in
- They were responsible for the home—caring for children, finding food, water, and fuel, cooking meals,
growing crops, tending livestock—which tied poor women to low-lying residences. Their mobility was limited
by cultural definitions of women’s proper dress, demeanor, and public visibility—their long, loose clothing
restricted movement; they were ashamed to seek higher ground occupied by unrelated men; they could not swim.
Women’s relative poverty made them less resilient—they had poor nutrition, poor health care, and limited family
support since divorced and widowed women were discouraged from remarrying (Cannon 2002). The Bangladesh
case poses the general question: how do gender and class intersect in different national settings to create
vulnerabilities and resiliencies to climate change?
It is not only in developing countries or the global South that gender economic dynamics shape
vulnerabilities to disasters. Seager (2005) studied the hydro-meteorological and political disasters associated with
Hurricane Katrina in 2005 in New Orleans. She noted that “Poverty combines with race and ideologies about
gender to produce a metric of deep disadvantage in terms of mobility: even in a country as awash in cars as the
United States, women are less like to have a car or a driver’s license than their male counterparts” (P. 30). Reports
about post-Katrina New Orleans revealed a moral economy of raced and gendered valuations of worth, credibility,
dangerousness, and deservingness that bears on many aspects of disasters, including those associated with global
climate change. Officials and reporters described New Orleans as a “war zone” where “anarchy” reigned with
dangerous Black men sniping, looting, and raping (see Tierney et al. 2006; Stock 2007).^48 Ransby (2006:218)
found little sympathy for the presumed victims of this crime wave, Black women, who were depicted as “culprits
in their own misfortune” because of their laziness, promiscuity, and irresponsibility rather than because of low
pay, lack of jobs, and lack of affordable housing (see also Giroux 2006).^49 How do stereotypes, calculations of
worth and blame, questions of responsibility, and notions of fairness shape plans for and responses to disasters in
different national settings and in the international system? What are the implications of gendered and racialized
meaning systems for understanding the impacts of climate change?
Gender and Climate & Disaster Policy: Although they can be more vulnerable than men, and thus have
a perspective grounded in experience, women generally are not at the table in policy discussions of disaster
planning, mitigation, or response. Carvajal-Escobar et al. (2008) report that women’s voices are not often heard
in discussions about the design of development projects to mitigate disasters despite their special knowledge
of local landscapes and needs. For instance, women are the main producers of the world’s staple food crops,
working mostly as small farmers. Policies designed to address the impact of climate change on agriculture should,
but seldom does, include representatives of these women small-scale farmers. Disasters disrupt local lives and
economies in predictable gendered ways, so does rebuilding after the storm. Removing debris and reconstruction
projects are much more likely to provide jobs to male workers. A growing literature on gendered dimensions of
climate change stresses the importance of including women’s needs, interests, and perspective in planning for
(^48) The notorious murders in the Superdome were never documented, though several people died from natural causes or suicide, nor was
there clearly documented evidence of widespread rape or sexual assault (Rosenblatt & Rainey 2005; Thevenot & Russell 2005). I would
argue that racial cosmologies of Black male dangerousness, especially their sexual dangerousness, added fuel to the rumors of rape, looting,
sniping, and overall mayhem that characterized much early reporting about post-Katrina New Orleans.
(^49) Ransby also points out the resiliency of many whose lives were disrupted by Hurricane Katrina, including the support networks and
mutual aid responses undertaken by many of New Orleans most vulnerable residents; for a discussion of the ways in which gender shaped
the impact of Hurricane Katrina on men and women in New Orleans, see Read (2009).