Notes

1. Report based on a Quick-Response Grant from the Natural Hazards Research and Applications Center and the National Science Foundation, for which I am very grateful. I am also deeply indebted to Mihir R. Bhatt, Honorary Director of the Disaster Mitigation Institute, for facilitating my participation in this research. The field team responsible for survey design, data collection, and data coding included Mehul Pancholi and Girija Makwana of DMI and Sapna Raval of the Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA). I thank them wholeheartedly, as well as Jikesh Thallar and others at DMI who so generously shared their time and ideas. Correspondence to: E. Enarson, 33174 Bergen Mt. Rd., Evergreen CO, 80439, USA; tel: (303) 670-1834; fax: (303) 679-0938; e-mail: enarson@uswest.net.

2. Information in this section is drawn from the United Nations Disaster Assessment and Coordination Team (DACT) Bhuj Final Report, based on information available February 17, 2001 (UN OCHA, 2001). See also the National Disaster Management Division of India website: http://www.ndindia.nic.in/eq2001.

3. Summaries of articles on the topic can be found on-line www.arct.cam.ac.uk/disasterdiplomacy on the Disaster Diplomacy website developed and maintained by Ilan Kelman. Also see Twigg, 2000.

4. Updates and summaries of relief and rehabilition projects undertaken by the Gujarat government are available on-line: www.GujaratIndia.com/index1.html.

5. As reported by journalists Sreenivas (2001); Shah (2001); Harding (2001); and Baldouf (2001). Also see the Times of India report "Voluntary agencies put caste spin on rehabilitation work" (March 16, p. 5), among others.

6. For summaries of earthquake responses three months after the event, see UNIC Press Release updates, available on-line through the UN Information Center: www.un.org.in.

7. Fact Sheet, "The Vulnerability of Women in South Asia," available on-line through DMI: www.dmi.southasiadisasters.net.

8. DMI is a community-based action research and action planning organization working to bridge gaps among policy, practice, and research, from the community to the national level. Their web site summarizes past research and action projects in the region. Of particular interest are village-level assessments in Surendranagar of government drought-relief measures; a collaborative seminar on women's health in drought; grassroots research into levels of public awareness and preparedness in earthquake-prone Bhavnagar; community-based action planning for disaster preparedness in l00 villages of the most disaster-affected parts of Gujarat; participatory writing workshops with women in north and central Gujarat impacted by drought, flood, and malaria; collaboration with local self-help groups to monitor and assess rainwater harvesting strategies; research into women's roles in family-based conservation; action planning on vulnerability reduction conducted with women artisans in Kutch; and extensive community action planning for preparedness against the threat of cyclones in the Kutch and Saurashtra regions of Gujarat. The DMI web site describes overall goals and projects as well as specific responses to the earthquake, including responses to action requests from Surendranagar. Available on-line through DMI: www.dmi.southasiadisasters.net.

9. A revealing survey documented significant gaps between the services response agencies intended to provide to senior disaster survivors (e.g., family relocation services, counseling, housing), and what survivors wanted (HelpAge International, 1999). Work was the first concern of elders, male and female; money earned by grandmothers, for example, was needed to pay school fees for grandchildren or to reduce seniors' dependence on family members. Available on-line through HelpAge International: www.helpage.org.

10. The vulnerability literature is large and growing. Blaikie et al. (1997) and Hewitt (1997) provide good theoretical discussions. For regional perspectives, see Twigg and Bhatt (1998) and Fernando and Fernando (1997) from South Asia; Holloway (1999) from Southern Africa; and Maskrey (1989) from Latin America. Bhatt (1998) discusses methodological issues arising for outside researchers assessing community vulnerability.

11. Among others, see Cutter (1995), Wiest et al. (1994), Bolin et al. (1998), Fordham (1998, 2000), Enarson (1998, 1999), Enarson and Phillips (2000). Fernando and Fernando (1997) and Ariyabandu (2000) provide excellent discussions of South Asian women's vulnerability; also see Khondker (1996), Rozario (1997), Ikeda (1995), and Bhatt (1997). An electronic bibliography is available on-line through the Gender and Disaster Network at www.anglia.ac.uk/geography/gdn. For a review of the gender, risk, and disaster literature, see Fothergill (1996).

12. For illustrations of these intersections, see Shroeder (1987) on gender and caste in an African drought, and Enarson and Fordham (2001) on gender, race, and class in floods in the U.S. and U.K., among others.

13. Gender-specific data are not (yet?) available to support inferences about gendered patterns of mortality and injury. A psychologist working closely with survivors has observed families in which the survival of daughters seemed less important than the death of sons (personal communication, Dr. Ilo Joshi, Gujarat University).

14. Most researchers and field workers have pointed instead to lack of gender equity in preparedness, relief, and reconstruction. Among others, see case studies from the U.S. (e.g., Morrow and Enarson, 1996), Bangladesh (e.g., Begum, 1993; Khondker, 1996; Hossain et al., 1992), and Latin America (Delaney and Shrader, 2000; Buviníc, et al. 1999). The UNDAC Bhuj report also noted that free food ration kits distributed by the government did not include food items meeting the nutritional needs of children and pregnant and lactating women.

15. Reported in a Natural Disaster Management Division update. Available on-line: www.ndindia.nic.in/eq2001/eq2001.html.

16. One displaced woman interviewed by Lak in her tent observed, "After the earthquake, the men of the family stopped working. They cannot just go out and start working, so the women are the only ones who can earn. The men are all in trauma. The local shopkeepers have stopped giving us food on credit. Now we're going to earn every day and buy things every day.

17. Cited in a summary of UN activities at www.un.org.in/prles/unicpr.htm. The ILO's new InFocus Programme on Crisis Response and Reconstruction has a strong focus on gender.

18. Summarized in an electronic funding appeal by SPARC-SSP. For more information, contact director Sheela Patel (sparcl@vsnl.com).

19. The SEWA web site reports on their organizing efforts and accomplishments and their current responses to members impacted by the earthquake: www.sewa.org. They have collaborated with DMI in the past on a number of grassroots disaster mitigation projects.

20. Reported on the Seeds website: seedsindia.org. Seeds has moved from relief to the development of a village-based rehabilitation model and guidelines for research on reconstruction. The network of grassroots mitigation groups in South Asia developed through Duryog Niravan and Intermediate Technology is another resource for gender-aware risk reduction in the region. Their activities and goals and described on-line: www.adpc.ait.ac.th/duryog/duryog.html.

21. Derived from data reported by the Government of Gujarat (2000) and the New Internationalist (2001).

22. See the commentary by Wisner (2001), which traces the fragility of rural life to the so-called green revolution of the 1960s. Available on-line through the web site for Radical Interpretations of Disasters and Radical Solutions (RADIX): www.anglia.ac.uk/geography/radix. RADIX offers discussions on the root causes of vulnerability and the politics of disasters, observations about current disasters, selected readings, action guidelines, photo essays, and other resources, including many essays relating to the Gujarat earthquake.

23. A gender perspective in livelihoods analysis is common in development studies. See Mitti and Mullins (1999) and Tichagwa (1994) for two examples with a disaster mitigation focus.

24. As an artisan in Kutch told SEWA workers, "Bring us more work, only this will help bring normalcy back to our lives and our village. Without work, home and food, the black day keeps us haunting. We become dull - cannot think of the future." Another woman voiced support for SEWA's initiative to provide craft kits to over 2000 artisans in the affected areas, who pitched large tents and worked together to produce embroidered items for sale: "At least our skill brought immediate work and dignity back to life! We feel secured now." Quoted in internal SEWA documents on midterm relief and rehabilitation.

25. In focus groups representing cross-sections of women in rural parts of the state, village women described their disaster vulnerability through Participatory Evaluation Writing designed to elicit women's first-hand assessments of conditions making their daily lives precarious. Participants also identified social conditions of landlessness, exploitative working conditions, high levels of child malnutrition, inadequate health services, illiteracy and lack of sexual self-determination as factors of chronic vulnerability that increased their economic insecurity in the face of extreme events. The vulnerability of urban women in Gujarat was also analyzed.

26. Jamuben is one such gum collector, profiled by SEWA researchers in "The Gum Collectors: Struggling to Survive in the Dry Areas of Banaskantha" (p. 9):

She is 37 years old and illiterate. She is the sole adult earner as her husband is physically disabled and she has two minor daughters and a son. She has been collecting gum for the last 27 years, i.e. she started working when she was only l0 years of age. Today, her daughters help her in the work of gum-collection, while her son goes to school. . . The season for gum-collection is throughout eight months of the calendar year, while during the remaining four months, her family earns their livelihood through working in the farms and embroidery work. . . There is not even a single grocery shop in the village. She has to travel to adjoining villages in order to procure the basic necessities. There is a chronic problem of water scarcity in her village. So her family members have to travel a minimum of 5-6 kilometers to fetch water for drinking. Moreover, there is no primary health centre or medical clinic to cater to the health needs of her village.

27. This newspaper account of "unsung heroines" reported that the Gujarat Water Supply Board trained SEWA and Surendranagar Mahila women for six months to operate the water system serving four villages. These women "mustered the courage" of climbing to the top of a large overhead storage tank to repair a pipe damaged by the quake. The local co-coordinator contrasted the women's action with that of the local mason, who "simply fled and refused to do anything as there were frequent tremors."

28. Because the time frame of these two different kinds of disasters is so different, their comparative effects can only be estimated but not analyzed with precision.

29. A question about which, if any, women benefited or seemed likely to benefit economically from this event was asked initially but elicited no response. The author is grateful for the opportunity to contribute to additional questions to the survey.

30. Interviews were conducted in Gujarati and responses coded and translated by the field team. Conclusions are also informed by journalistic accounts, field reports from humanitarian relief agencies and government authorities, and general observations by the field team and DMI staff about living conditions during the drought and after the quake.

31. This figure exceeds the estimate of 13 villages with more than 70% damage cited in the UN DACT Bhuj Report (UN OCHA, 2001). The difference may reflect a combination of time and measurement differences and the limitations of assessments made from the outside looking in.

32. In light of widely reported delays in the government's implementation of paid quake relief work, this finding needs investigation.

33. In the very large literature on women and structural adjustment policies, see Harrison (1997) for an insightful case study from Jamaica.

34. See DMI (2001) for a community review and assessment by Surendranagar residents of the government's drought relief efforts in 2000.

35. A recent study by Nelson and Smith (1999) of how low-income residents earn income in rural New England illustrates this complexity.

36. See Mary Anderson's early statement about the need for gender analysis in "the disaster-development continuum" (Anderson, 1994). Contemporary examples of the benefit of this approach appear in a recent Oxfam newsletter discussion of "Gender Equity and Humanitarian Response."

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