Transcript
ALETA MILLER: Women are more affected by disasters than men in many different ways including for example, violence often increases greatly after a disaster.
KOROI HAWKINS: You talk about the extra responsibilities that women take on as well.
ALETA MILLER: Indeed so women are often framed as first responders which is a nice powerful accurate description, you know, that women are active agents of change in their communities but women also have this added burden of having these multiple burdens which can be exacerbated by disasters. So women for example, in addition to caring for their immediate families and the roles that they would play as business people or people within markets or those roles within those communities, they may have to care for children whose parents were injured or killed, they may have to care for the injured within the community, they may have to care more for elderly people so there're these multiple burdens that certainly increase after a disaster.
KOROI HAWKINS: Is this recognised by the global disaster response community and is it taken in to consideration?
AM: It's certainly recognised at a global level and efforts are made to take this into consideration but to be very honest, when a disaster happens, often all of that good intention and prior agreement can go straight out the window when we start focusing very much on commodities. We advocate that we have to still hold this position and look at what remains important at a human level even in the first days after an emergency when it often is about food, water, shelter but it also needs to be about protection.
KH: How do you incorporate that or make sure that is done in a region where even the basics of delivering aid during a disaster is not properly done?
AM: There's a couple of things that can be done and a few of them we are already doing, one of them is really good planning and that planning needs to include women. It needs to include different groups within the community for example people with disabilities, so we can't just have strategist sitting in an office somewhere who for example might be a man, and often this sector is often more male dominated, but whether it's a man or a woman doing that planning they have to consult with affected groups.
KH: You also talk about moving away from talking about vulnerability but also looking at the strengths that women bring in these situations and in general everyday life.
AM: Absolutely, and these words are not my own these are the words of the community that I'm responsible to in many ways as a representative of the UN Women so I have to listen to and be informed by women's groups so I have to walk the talk that I'm saying here and women's groups are saying to me and to those that are listening very strongly, we aren't just vulnerable or we aren't vulnerable, or we don't want you to portray us as a vulnerable group, there are vulnerabilities, [and] vulnerabilities can be exacerbated but women and other groups are strong, they're resilient, they're dynamic, they have a voice, they can play that role so we've got to listen to that if we just portray people as a victim of something that is going to be impressed upon them we're not able to really hear who they are, what they need, what they want and the power that they really have.
