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| Sachiko Asano, co-leader of Training Center for Gender & Disaster Risk Reduction headquartered in Tokyo, speaks during her lecture at Japan's Cabinet Office in Tokyo, Dec. 2. Korea Times photo by Park Ji-won |
By Park Ji-won
TOKYO ― A Japanese disaster response expert stressed the importance of empowering female members in local communities to take a leadership role in disaster recovery as it leads to preventing further damage and deaths.
"I have been saying to local Japanese community leaders ― mostly men ― who are in charge of recovery operations for victims of natural disasters, that women, who actually carry out most care work for the victims, should become leaders to save more senior citizens, women and children. Otherwise, all lives will be in danger," Sachiko Asano, co-leader of Training Center for Gender & Disaster Risk Reduction (GDRR), a nongovernmental organization aiming to promote disaster recovery response systems based on gender equality in Japan, told reporters from around the Asia-Pacific region at Japan's Cabinet Office in Tokyo, Dec. 2. She held a lecture during the government organization's Asia-Pacific Female Journalists Exchange Program.
In Japan, a country which frequently faces various natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, typhoons and volcanic eruptions due to its location in the Ring of Fire of the Pacific Ocean, calls are rising for more gender-based perspectives in disaster response roles. It became more obvious that more women die than men in the wake of disasters and women are prone to be left behind in disaster care needs.
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| Participants carry out earthquake drills at Honjo Life Safety Learning Center in Tokyo, Japan, Dec. 2. Korea Times photo by Park Ji-won |
The leader of the GDRR ― one of a very few organizations in Japan which focus on gender issues when talking about disaster management ― is an expert on disaster risk reduction, a researcher for the Institute for Sustainable Community and Risk Management of Waseda University, and an adviser of the guidelines for disasters written by the Tokyo metropolitan government.
The GDRR chief, who was raised by her single mother, started volunteer activities for the Great Hanshin earthquake in 1995 and began working as an activist for various social issues including disaster risk reduction in 1999. She has been paying extra attention to gender-related issues at disaster scenes since 2003 as she felt that helping the weak, elderly, children and women can directly relate to her personal security as well as experience as a child of a vulnerable family.
"Personally as a child in a single parent family, I continued to have a fear for being left alone and homeless after large disasters. That's one of the reasons that I went to help the victims of the Hanshin disaster, where many women and relatives of single parents had difficulties in many ways… A mother with a baby could not join the shelter because her baby cried too much," Asano said.
She also pointed out that another source of motivation for her was her frustration with newspapers, which intentionally silenced junior reporters trying to make public the numerous cases of female victims and volunteer workers suffering sexual harassment from male disaster victims at shelters.
Through her work, she discovered that gender equality directly affects the quality of life of those at disaster shelters and believes that employing more women is key to improving conditions for everyone. She said one of the reasons is that men who run local disaster control centers don't listen to female community members who are usually the ones responsible for taking care of the elderly and children and thus have a better idea of what is needed.
Asano stressed that women are also more vulnerable to domestic violence, sexual harassment and rape at shelters after disasters.
She pointed out that gender studies in disaster response in Japan, however, is 20 years behind compared to that of Western society because the country's disaster recovery plan was formed by the country's land ministry and not based on science, ending up ignoring victims' physical and mental health and their social needs.
For the Hanshin earthquake in 1995, 3,680 women died from the earthquake and aftermath while 2,713 men died. For the Kumamoto earthquakes around 50 people died directly due to the quake, but another 250 people died after the disaster. She said every disaster center ends up giving insufficient help for the vulnerable due to lack of understanding of the details of the victims, leading to the increase in deaths.
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| A woman carries her baby on her back at an evacuation center in Fukushima, northern Japan, March 28, 2011. Japan appeared resigned to a long fight to contain the world's most dangerous atomic crisis in 25 years after high radiation levels complicated work at its crippled nuclear plant. Korea Times file |
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| Evacuees rest at a shelter in Miyako, Iwate, northern Japan, March 15, 2011, after March 11's massive earthquake and tsunami. Korea Times file |
"At the Hanshin earthquake, for example, many people died from pneumonia and influenza because it was cold back then. Toilets in shelters were dirty and difficult to use, many women and senior citizens tried not to go to the toilet. They were dehydrated and some died from deep vein thrombosis. Some with diabetes suffered due to a lack of appropriate food. In general, many die from respiratory-related diseases because they inhale viruses directly from the floor as shelters cannot supply beds soon enough and people end up sleeping on the floors," she said.
She also said female members are underestimated by male leaders and expected to serve in assistant roles at shelters.
"Female members are considered to be cooks or assistants in the disaster scene, even though they actively participated in the rescue activities in the 2011 earthquake, for example," she said.
To tackle the current male-dominated situation, she urged Japanese women, who consider patience a virtue, to take action by themselves, to take more leadership positions in disaster situations and to speak up about their needs. Asano also underlined the necessity of educating women to become leaders at the governmental and private level so that women can participate in decision-making processes and give better victim-oriented perspectives and thus can improve the shelters' environment and save more lives with better conditions.
Stressing that preparation is vital to reducing casualties in natural disasters, she said the Tokyo government started to hold more workshops about survival skills and disaster risk reduction for women and minorities including immigrants who are most vulnerable in disaster situations. Asano also formed a network called the "Female Disaster Risk Reduction Network Tokyo" in July 2018 where various experts hold workshops to prepare for a massive earthquake that is largely expected to hit the Tokyo area within the next 30 years.
"Tokyo is also planning to join hands with NGOs working to eliminate child poverty, protect the rights of foreign minorities and hold education programs to educate relevant family members about disaster risk reduction next month," said Asano, adding that it is not totally a matter of gender as more men are starting to take care of their elder relatives and children.
"However, the most important and difficult issue is empowering women as there are not many local-community-based woman's organizations like in the past. So I think it is necessary for (the civic organizations and the government) to make more of an effort to create chances to give women in various situations, those who are married or unmarried or have babies or not, interesting gatherings."
Also, she hoped that there would be more researchers working on gender-focused studies about disaster risk reduction as there are few others left to continue working on the issue.
