Paper short abstract:

Is there such a thing as an inventory of possibilities of disaster responses that can make visible gendered experiences from a social and cultural world view? This raises questions about power expressions, and integration of gender and justice framings from a social and cultural world view.

Paper long abstract:

Is there such a thing as an inventory of possibilities of disaster responses that can make visible gendered experiences from a social and cultural world view? This paper uses the test case of the unprecedented 2023 Cyclone Freddy disaster in per-urban Soche Hill of Blantyre – Malawi – to interrogate power biases in disaster responses, socially and culturally accepted framings of climate justice, and implications for gender justice. We deploy multilevel interviews, storytelling, and observations to explore social and cultural constructions of disasters, inclusion and exclusion of actors and what this means for gender and locally constructed assumptions of justice. Preliminary results show the making of vulnerability is a function of historical and neoliberal continuities that marginalize women. Related power bias privileges state actors on the one hand, and international actors on the other hand as architects of disaster frames and responses. This power bias, however, has been exclusionary to social and culture views of disaster, including gender, leading to narrow as opposed to a broad-based construction of disaster and responses. Whereas women express vulnerability more than men, insights from disaster camps show disproportional allocation of responsibilities to women which has been accompanied by gender blind interventions from state and non-state actors. Ultimately, this paper reflects on how justice lens can be integrated in disaster responses for a sustainable understanding of disasters across gender. It also centres on the possible inventory of possibilities on how gender particularly women can be integrated and made visible in disaster framing and responses.