Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath can still be felt even after two years since it devastated the Mississippi Gulf Coast and Louisiana. No one felt its effects more than women did, but they have managed to turn their situation around and became crucial actors in recovery efforts. Discover women’s importance in recovery and rebuilding in the wake of disasters.

Recovery efforts are still ongoing even after two years since Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Mississippi Gulf Coast and Louisiana. At the centre of recovery efforts are the women who are now playing major roles in reconstruction and rehabilitation.

Critical resource

“[Despite being] disproportionately impacted by the storm, [women] represent a critical resource for relief and recovery,” said Sara Gould and Cynthia Schmae of the Ms. Foundation for Women and the Women’s Funding Network, respectively, in their article, “Katrina's Gender Focus Offers Lesson for Recovery.”  Ms. Foundation for Women and the Women’s Funding Network are nongovernment organisations committed to allocating resources to help people and organisations cope with the Katrina tragedy and rebuild their lives and communities.

“[L]ow-income women and women of color, whose understanding of the disaster and of their communities holds vast potential for positive change,” added Gould and Schmae.

Sharon Hanshaw, of Biloxi, Mississippi, is one such woman. With assistance from Oxfam America, she founded the Coastal Women for Change (CWC), a group of activists pushing for greater representation of women of colour in the mayor’s planning commission. Hanshaw and CWC’s 25 members are active in bringing international attention to the US Gulf Coast region, and works with affected women on such issues as housing and childcare. These women also speak out on behalf of marginalised communities around the world.

“Our mission is to empower these women with knowledge of what they can do,” said Hanshaw who is also CWC’s director. “It’s unlimited. You can build. You can go back to school. You can call your local officials. You can talk to them. They’re there for us.”

Similarly, Brenda Dardar Robichaux launched the United Houma Nation Relief Fund to mobilise resources to support the 18,000 members of the United Houma Nation of Southeastern Louisiana. The relief fund was used for trauma counselling and educational programmes for young people and training for women in non-traditional careers such as construction, where the disaster created new job opportunities.

Lessons for recovery

Gould and Schmae offer two critical lessons for recovery and rebuilding in the wake of disasters based on their organisations' experiences in working with women in the Gulf Coast.

The first lesson is that there should be an integrated approach to supporting women and their families after disaster strikes. “The most successful approach to relief and recovery is one that bundles multiple services and agencies through a main contact point or lead agency,” they said, adding that women-led organisations are in the best position to respond to the affected communities’ short-term and long-term needs.

Second, women should be equipped to enter fields with increased demand. They underlined that out of the 180,000 jobs lost in Louisiana after Katrina, 57 percent belonged to women. With lost opportunities, women could be trained in non-traditional careers like construction where demand is greatest.

“Women can break Sheetrock, women can wire homes, and women can drive trucks,” New Orleans council member Shelley Midura pointed out. “These are good-paying jobs.”

Women at the centre

“It should not take a national disaster to remind us that women's full participation in their communities and at state and national policy tables should be the rule rather than the exception,” Gould and Schmae added. “If nothing else, Katrina and her ravages have given us an opportunity to shift the status quo in a new direction: one in which the needs of women and families fall at the centre—not the margins—of policy agendas.”

Backgrounder

Coastal Women for Change began in January 2006, out of a concern that there were very few instances where the residents of Biloxi, Mississippi came together as a community to discuss and take part in the long range community planning and rebuilding. Knowing that in every community there are lots of concerned women who want a vibrant, healthy and safe community for their family to live in, and that there are a lot of threats to that, especially since Katrina, a group of women came together to talk about what was happening in the community, what issues and problems lay ahead, and how they could be addressed. For more information, visit <http://www.cwcbiloxi.org/>.

The United Houma Nation Relief Fund grew out of the need for donations to continue the rebuilding process of their communities. The group solicits assistance in meeting the basic needs and reconstruction of the homes of the people. For further details, visit <http://www.unitedhoumanation.org/>.

Sources:
“Katrina's gender focus offers lesson for recovery” from Women's eNews, posted on August 29, 2007,  <http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm?aid=3294>.
“Low-income women not benefiting from Katrina recovery work” from Associated Press, posted on August 21, 2006, <http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,209458,00.html>. “New organization lives up to its name: Coastal Women for Change” from Oxfam America, posted on May 31, 2006, <http://www.oxfamamerica.org/whatwedo/emergencies/hurricane_katrina/news_publications/feature_story.2006-05-31.7409906734>.