Reframing Gendered Disaster: Lessons from Nepal's Indigenous women

Disaster impacts are gendered. Women are often disproportionately vulnerable to and affected by disasters. However, little research exists on how Indigenous women from the Global South experience disasters and how they respond and contribute to the post-disaster recovery. This paper examines the experience of Indigenous women in the disaster recovery process with a case study of Indigenous Guthi in Nepal's Kathmandu Valley. Nepal provides an interesting case as it was devastated by the 2015 earthquakes, and the recovery process continues till today, with many Indigenous peoples at the forefront of the recovery. This paper demonstrates that Indigenous women experience fear and anxiety and have limited capacity and leverage to influence the disaster recovery process. The government response has been unsatisfactory because they were too focussed on materials and physical reconstructions, ignoring the social and cultural recovery. On the other hand, the Indigenous knowledge, institutions, and cultures have tried to combine physical and social recovery, addressing the needs and aspirations of many Indigenous women. However, Indigenous efforts remain insufficient and exclusionary of Indigenous women. Indigenous women are marginalised, and this marginalisation persists with continuing adverse effects on the life and livelihoods of Indigenous women. The paper highlights three ways to reframe gendered disasters: understanding knowledge hegemony, challenging tokenistic participation, and changing the misguided DRR policies and practices of gender mainstreaming.