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Critical Perspectives on Gender Mainstreaming in Disaster Contexts

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Cultural Psychology of Coping with Disasters

Abstract

In this chapter, the concept of coping is understood as the capacity for societally assimilative and accommodative development rather than in terms of the individual, subjective, and intrapsychic (above all, cognitive) processes popular in mainstream psychology. Instead of examining individuals’ well-being from a value-free perspective, this chapter presents a critical inquiry into the different ways of understanding—as well as ways and means of achieving—social justice with regard to gender relations in a village community. For this purpose, participant observation and guided interviews were conducted at different points with both activists and villagers. One characteristic of the village community is that various local aid organizations have been working on social justice and gender issues, amongst other themes. Villagers and activists defined respectful treatment of one another as one of the ideals of gender-just relations, although some meant equality (equal abilities, rights, and duties) while others emphasized complementarity (different abilities, rights, and duties). Diverse recovery intervention strategies carried out with the aim of improving gender justice are discussed and the role of micro-credit lending is highlighted. Finally, the implications and limitations of interventions and programs designed to promote profound and sustainable social change in the context of disasters and gender mainstreaming are examined.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In the year 2000, 189 states committed to reaching development targets by 2015, ranging from increasing gender equality and women’s empowerment to halving extreme poverty rates (http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/; accessed 10 August 2013).

  2. 2.

    DAWN stands for Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era. DAWN was founded in the Philippines in 1984 and nowadays consists of a broad network from Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Pacific, and the Caribbean (http://www.dawnnet.org/index.php; accessed 29 July 2012). The Duryog Nivaran network is active primarily in South Asia (http://www.duryognivaran.org/; accessed 29 July 2012).

  3. 3.

    More information about possible tensions within, amendments to, and legitimization of externally funded, internationally propagated gender policies with Western connotations in disaster relief and socioculturally specific movements can be found in Schwarz (2012).

  4. 4.

    Depending on changing paradigms, this sort of gender politics has been labeled by various terms: women in development, women and development, empowerment, gender and development, human rights-based approach, gender mainstreaming, work with men, diversity approach, or the LGBT approach (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) (Wichterich 2010).

  5. 5.

    This distinctiveness also restricts possible generalizations of the results to other contexts or villages.

  6. 6.

    The organization’s homepage (also in English): http://rifka-annisa.or.id/; accessed 4 May 2012.

  7. 7.

    ASPPUK stands for Asosiasi Pendamping Perempuan Usaha Kecil and means a union supporting small entrepreneurs. The organization’s website: http://www.asppuk.or.id/; accessed 7 Oct 2012. As part of the ASPPUK program, a women’s cooperative with nine business-specific subgroups (food, agriculture, and ceramics, as well as trade) was formed.

  8. 8.

    ICBC stands for Institute for Community Behavioral Change. The organization’s website: http://www.icbc-indonesia.org/; accessed 12 May 2012. ICBC was active under the Ford Foundation network with its rehabilitation program to deal with the destroyed houses in Sido Kabul and was directed primarily at men. The NGO was then active again in the hamlet from April 2008 to May 2009, funded this time by the Malaysian Force of Nature Aid Foundation and had a specifically female target group.

  9. 9.

    IHAP stands for Institute of Hak Asasi Perempuan, the Institute for Women’s Rights. The organization’s website: http://ihap.or.id; accessed on 10 May 2012. The NGO had already been in the hamlet in August 2006 and was not integrated into the Ford Foundation network.

  10. 10.

    Translated from German by Sarah Howard.

  11. 11.

    Those with a complementary attitude described more rigid gender concepts, often based on religious and biological arguments.

  12. 12.

    Wolf (1992) attributes decades of influence on subsequent gender research projects by the works by Geertz (1961) and Jay (1969), who both argued that women’s control over the family income was an indicator of their level of autonomy, therefore suggesting the high status of Javanese women.

  13. 13.

    An external hegemony denotes the power relations between men and women, whereas an internal hegemony describes the relations of men among themselves.

  14. 14.

    For an assessment of each gender analysis procedure with respect to the objectives of this research, see Schwarz (2012).

  15. 15.

    Translated from German by Sarah Howard.

  16. 16.

    I carried out the division into the different areas of life deductively, with the aim of enabling both a differentiated and a comprehensive analysis. It may not, however, correspond to the views of the interviewees. It is especially in the West that areas of life are often dichotomized into a public and private sector and then endowed with certain values. This seemingly “natural” dichotomy in the social sciences and humanities between public and private has been questioned by gender researchers (for example, by Pateman 1989). The main problem with this division is that it expresses a hierarchical arrangement of these areas, running along the lines of a gender-specific binary that is often not explicitly addressed nor challenged. Andro- and Eurocentric assumptions have been identified by various critics as the basis of this hierarchy-creating dichotomy (Bargetz 2009; Benn and Gaus 1983; Collins 1991; Dahlerup 1987; Elsthein 1981; Hauser 1987).

  17. 17.

    The directions of change indicate general trends, but the contradictory and complex issues are likely to be obscured. As the results are presented in greater detail, the issue of multidimensionality becomes apparent (see later).

  18. 18.

    Translated from German by Sarah Howard.

  19. 19.

    For detailed elaborations with regard to individual-, household- and communal-related dynamics of transformation and conservation, see Schwarz (2012).

  20. 20.

    Participation in a disaster management group, in community health care, or the electoral committee was mentioned. Communal groups, however, remained largely gender-separated. Women were involved in the health, consumer, and economic areas, men in village development.

  21. 21.

    When compared with the Rifka group with its focus on domestic violence, the example of the women’s cooperative clearly demonstrates that the gender dimension cannot be disentangled from socioeconomic aspects of power. The cooperative’s money which had to be managed seems to have decidedly rekindled the conflict, whereas the domestic violence group—even though it was contested—did not lead to the same level of public criticism and conflict.

  22. 22.

    Translated from German by Sarah Howard.

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Acknowledgements

The editors would like to thank Sarah Howard for translating this chapter from German into English.

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  1. International Academy for Innovative Pedagogy, Psychology and Economics gGmbH at Freie Universität Berlin, Malteserstr. 74-100, 12249, Berlin, Germany

    Silke Schwarz

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  1. Silke Schwarz
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Correspondence to Silke Schwarz .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. International Academy for Innovative Pedagogy, Psychology and Economics gGmbH at Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Manfred Zaumseil

  2. International Academy for Innovative Pedagogy, Psychology and Economics gGmbH at Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Silke Schwarz

  3. Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Mechthild von Vacano

  4. Leeds Metropolitan University, Leeds, United Kingdom

    Gavin Brent Sullivan

  5. Center for Research and Community Service, Christian University of Krida Wacana (UKRIDA), Jakarta Barat, Indonesia

    Johana E. Prawitasari-Hadiyono

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Schwarz, S. (2014). Critical Perspectives on Gender Mainstreaming in Disaster Contexts. In: Zaumseil, M., Schwarz, S., von Vacano, M., Sullivan, G., Prawitasari-Hadiyono, J. (eds) Cultural Psychology of Coping with Disasters. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-9354-9_16

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