by Cordula Reimann, KOFF/swisspeace

The Northern Pakistani earthquake of October 2005 led to 75.000 dead, 3.5 million displaced and more than a million people jobless. It hit a society characterized by high levels of domestic violence, restrictions on women's mobility, a strong purdah system – which means the Muslim system of sex segregation, practiced especially by keeping women in seclusion - poor education for girls and women, and limited employment opportunities and access to resources for women.

During and after the earthquake
The available information on the most affected areas Azad Jummu and Kashmir (AJK) and North Western Frontier Province (NWFP) stresses that most of those affected in terms of psycho-social stress, restoration of livelihoods and their legal and protection rights were poor men and women, and more particularly single parents, widows, female heads of household, women and men with disabilities, as well as pregnant women and lactating mothers.

The little available sex-disaggregated data clearly indicates that the number of women and children killed was disproportionately high. The reason being that due to cultural-religious practices like purdah - which demands from women to be accompanied by men in public - women and their dependents did not leave the home. As many men lost their wives and children, child marriages and polygamy with the aim of keeping the land in the family are on the increase.

Forced relocation led to restricted women's access to and control over food and incomes and a further increase in their vulnerability. There are numerous reports on high rates of rape and violence against women and girls, such as the 2006 UNDP report on "Gender Mainstreaming in Recovery Phase-Post Earthquake Pakistan". Further the lack of physical and nutritional care for pregnant and lactating mothers, for example, has resulted in increasing maternal and infant mortality. There are also alarming, while not officially confirmed, cases of trafficking in women and girls as reported by the World Conservation Union (IUCN) in "Hearing their Voices: The Women and Children in the Earthquake Affected Areas of Pakistan" in 2006.

While men had greater access to information on government policies and reconstruction programmes, most men were left behind jobless. There is little information about their coping mechanisms and the impact of the earthquake on their mental health and psychological needs.

Gender awareness of humanitarian aid?
The main addressee of aid was the male head of household making women even more dependent and vulnerable. At the same time, in cases of male members' death, women were denied the right to land or houses as legal rights going back to brothers and other male close relatives.
According to the World Disasters Report of 2006, gender-awareness was higher, while still insufficient and isolated, among local civil society groups, UN and international agencies than among Pakistani government organizations. In general, too little attention was paid to the needs of men in terms of their psycho-social health and to women, especially to female-headed households, in terms of their personal hygiene, privacy, psycho-social health and sanitation.
Due to cultural traditions and customs, international organizations like OXFAM found it difficult to access women in the consultation and to hire them in for example their "cash for work" projects that is initiated by National Rural Support Programme (NRSP) in collaboration with the ILO and addresses livelihood needs and restoration of normality by removing garbage and debris. As a result, women were approached as "helpless victims" but not as "potential resources". Humanitarian aid tended to underutilize the skills and resources of women and neglected to draw on social networks to find the missing or carrying out evacuation plans.

Post-earthquake: Window of opportunity for women's empowerment?
There is some promising information pointing to the extreme resilience of women as breadwinners, caregivers and caretakers of livestock and land – and to the fact that they are making their voices heard. With the predominant stereotype of "women as helpless victims", women's organizations in conservative Pakistan are still a long way off being fully recognized as powerful force in reconstruction ensuring joint ownership of women and men.
New job opportunities in the education and health sector for women are promising signs. How far deep-rooted gender-stereotypes and cultural practices will be flexible enough to incorporate the gender-specific effects of the earthquake remains to be seen.

Dr. Cordula Reimann is peace and conflict researcher and works with swisspeace Berne at KOFF Center for Peacebuilding. She is mainly working on questions about gender dimensions in internal violent conflicts and civil conflict management. For more information, please contact Cordula.reimann@swisspeace.ch

See also:
International Federation off Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) (2006): World Disasters Report. Available at http://www.ifrc.org/publicat/wdr2006/summaries.asp

The World Conservation Union (2006): Hearing their Voices: The Women and Children in the Earthquake Affected Areas of Pakistan. Available at http://www.iucn.org/places/pakistan/pdf/wcrep_iucn_kk.pdf

UNDP (2006): Gender Mainstreaming in Recovery Phase-Post Earthquake Pakistan 

Published in: ECC-Newsletter, Special Issue "Gender, Environment, Conflict"