Elaine Enarson
Elaine Enarson is an “accidental disaster sociologist” whose personal experience in Hurricane Andrew sparked extensive work on gender, vulnerability and community resilience. She has conducted field studies in the US, Canada, India, and Indonesia exploring gendered impacts in disasters, women’s political mobilization, gender-based violence, women’s work and economic recovery, evacuation experiences, gender in the popular culture of disaster, and related concerns.
Elaine is a frequent speaker and consultant in the area working with UN agencies, and teaches distance education courses independently in sociology, women’s studies and emergency management. She co-edited The Gendered Terrain of Disaster: Through Women’s Eyes (1998), Women, Gender and Disaster: Global Issues and Initiatives (2009), and The Women of Katrina: How Gender, Race, and Class Matter in an American Disaster (2012). Her book Women Confronting Natural Disaster: From Vulnerability to Resilience (2012) focuses on the United States. Elaine is a founding member of the global Gender and Disaster Network and founder/facilitator of the US Gender and Disaster Resilience Alliance. She has convened numerous workshops on gender and disaster risk reduction, directed a grassroots risk assessment project with women in the Caribbean, and initiated the electronic Gender and Disaster Sourcebook project. After a teaching appointment in Manitoba at Brandon University’s Department of Applied Disaster and Emergency Studies, she returned to independent work based in Boulder, Colorado. Currently, she teaches on-line, and is developing gender-sensitive disaster planning and training guides. Her next book is a fundraising project on what quilters learn and share through disaster quilting.
Related Resources from Elaine Enarson
Two Solitudes, Many Bridges, Big Tent: Women’s Leadership in Climate and Disaster Risk Reduction
"Research, action and policy: Addressing the Gendered Impacts of Climate Change," January 2004