IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/jsecdv/v17y2015i2p200-222.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The social construction of gendered vulnerability to tsunami disaster: the case of coastal Sri Lanka

Author

Listed:
  • Pradeep Parida

Abstract

Drawing up on a qualitative research from the Hambantota District of southern Sri Lanka that experienced a devastating tsunami [a tsunami, usually associated with earthquakes, is also called as “seismic sea waves”. Other than earthquakes, tsunami can be generated by volcanic eruptions, landslides, and underwater explosions. In most cases, the water above the deformed area is displaced from its equilibrium position due to the tectonic earthquakes beneath the sea or ocean. In 1963, the term “tsunami” was adopted by the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG) conference to explain these phenomena, and it has remained in general use ever since. Also see, Fukao (J Geophys Res 84(B5):2303–2314, 1979 )] in 2004, this paper sets out to explore the social constructions of gendered vulnerability. A qualitative method is used here to enhance the likelihood of women’s own experiences and observations regarding the impact of the tsunami. Grounded in a combination of social vulnerability, feminist political ecology and gender and development perspective, this study demonstrates that women are “social, economic and political actors” in the social crisis arising out of the tsunami disaster. Those women, who were previously on the brink of miserable conditions, and who lived with every day adversity are the hardest hit and least able to recover. In the conclusion, it is argued that women as a social group are differentially exposed and also diversely resilient in the face of the tsunami depending upon their position in the stratification system. Copyright Institute for Social and Economic Change 2015

Suggested Citation

  • Pradeep Parida, 2015. "The social construction of gendered vulnerability to tsunami disaster: the case of coastal Sri Lanka," Journal of Social and Economic Development, Springer;Institute for Social and Economic Change, vol. 17(2), pages 200-222, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:jsecdv:v:17:y:2015:i:2:p:200-222
    DOI: 10.1007/s40847-015-0019-y
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s40847-015-0019-y
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s40847-015-0019-y?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sisira Jayasuriya & Peter McCawley, 2010. "The Asian Tsunami," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 13668.
    2. Keiko Ikeda, 1995. "Gender Differences in Human Loss and Vulnerability in Natural Disasters: A Case Study from Bangladesh," Indian Journal of Gender Studies, Centre for Women's Development Studies, vol. 2(2), pages 171-193, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mar Llorente-Marrón & Montserrat Díaz-Fernández & Paz Méndez-Rodríguez & Rosario González Arias, 2020. "Social Vulnerability, Gender and Disasters. The Case of Haiti in 2010," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(9), pages 1-21, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Gani Aldashev & Esteban Jaimovich & Thierry Verdier, 2018. "Small is Beautiful: Motivational Allocation in the Nonprofit Sector," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 16(3), pages 730-780.
    2. Prema-chandra Athukorala, 2012. "Disaster, Generosity and Recovery: Indian Ocean Tsunami," Departmental Working Papers 2012-04, The Australian National University, Arndt-Corden Department of Economics.
    3. Elke Loichinger & Samir KC & Wolfgang Lutz, 2015. "A four-dimensional population module for the analysis of future adaptive capacity in the Phang Nga province of Thailand," Vienna Yearbook of Population Research, Vienna Institute of Demography (VID) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna, vol. 13(1), pages 263-287.
    4. Uson, M., 2015. "Grabbing the 'clean slate' : The politics of the intersection of land grabbing, disasters and climate change," ISS Working Papers - General Series 603, International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam (ISS), The Hague.
    5. Prema-chandra Athukorala, 2012. "Indian Ocean Tsunami: Disaster, Generosity and Recovery," Asian Economic Journal, East Asian Economic Association, vol. 26(3), pages 211-231, September.
    6. Diana Alwis, 2020. "Distributional Impacts of Disaster Recovery: Sri Lankan Households a Decade after the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami," Economics of Disasters and Climate Change, Springer, vol. 4(1), pages 195-222, April.
    7. Chongwoo Choe & Paul A. Raschky, 2011. "Media, Democracy, and Government Action: Prevention vs. Palliation in the Time of Cholera," ISER Discussion Paper 0812, Institute of Social and Economic Research, Osaka University.
    8. Krislert Samphantharak, 2014. "Natural disasters and the economy: some recent experiences from Southeast Asia," Asian-Pacific Economic Literature, The Crawford School, The Australian National University, vol. 28(2), pages 33-51, November.
    9. Md. Kamruzzaman & Md. Enamul Kabir & A. T. M. Sakiur Rahman & Chowdhury Sarwar Jahan & Quamrul Hasan Mazumder & M. Sayedur Rahman, 2018. "Modeling of agricultural drought risk pattern using Markov chain and GIS in the western part of Bangladesh," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 20(2), pages 569-588, April.
    10. Dutta, Priyanka, 2014. "Reflecting on the role of institutions in the everyday lives of displaced women: The case of Ganga-erosion in Malda, West Bengal," Working Papers 324, Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bangalore.
    11. Diana De Alwis & Ilan Noy, 2019. "Sri Lankan households a decade after the Indian Ocean tsunami," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 23(2), pages 1000-1026, May.
    12. Aurélia Lépine & Maria Restuccio & Eric Strobl, 2021. "Can we mitigate the effect of natural disasters on child health? Evidence from the Indian Ocean tsunami in Indonesia," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(2), pages 432-452, February.
    13. Joost Santos & Christian Yip & Shital Thekdi & Sheree Pagsuyoin, 2020. "Workforce/Population, Economy, Infrastructure, Geography, Hierarchy, and Time (WEIGHT): Reflections on the Plural Dimensions of Disaster Resilience," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 40(1), pages 43-67, January.
    14. Jenny Moreno & Duncan Shaw, 2018. "Women’s empowerment following disaster: a longitudinal study of social change," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 92(1), pages 205-224, May.
    15. Choe, Chongwoo & Raschky, Paul A., 2016. "Media, institutions, and government action: Prevention vs. palliation in the time of cholera," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 75-93.
    16. Lianxiao & Takehiro Morimoto, 2019. "Spatial Analysis of Social Vulnerability to Floods Based on the MOVE Framework and Information Entropy Method: Case Study of Katsushika Ward, Tokyo," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(2), pages 1-19, January.
    17. Nilufar Ahmad, 2012. "Gender and Climate Change in Bangladesh," World Bank Publications - Reports 27416, The World Bank Group.
    18. De Alwis, Diana, 2018. "Distributional impacts of disaster recovery: Sri Lankan households a decade after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami," Working Paper Series 6980, Victoria University of Wellington, School of Economics and Finance.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:jsecdv:v:17:y:2015:i:2:p:200-222. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.