How gender mainstreaming transforms South Asia’s flood relief

A string of devastating natural disasters had an unexpected silver lining for women in India and Pakistan.

Pakistan experienced a severe flood in 2022 that impacted one-third of the population and caused unprecedented damage. However, two years later, hundreds of thousands of women are poised to gain property rights for the first time as the South Asian nation implements a reconstruction scheme.

Under the Sindh People’s Housing for Flood Affectees (SPHF) government scheme in Pakistan, 2 million houses are planned to be constructed, with about 150,000 built so far. Ownership rights to 800,000 units, or 40 per cent of the houses built on government land, are earmarked for women.

One of them is 70-year-old Sohni Mugheri, a widow and head of her family, living in the agricultural village of Ali Muhammad Mugheri in northern Sindh’s Dadu district. The flood washed away her mud house, forcing her and her 50-plus family members to seek shelter in makeshift tents one kilometre away from their village for two months. This was the third time Sohni had to relocate in the last 15 years.

This time, life took a different turn for Sohni. She received a new brick house constructed by the government.

She also obtained the first-ever property rights to the house plot. Under the housing project, the government is allocating land to both men and women, granting property rights only on its government-owned land. As a result, the land where Sohni Mugheri lives, previously government property, has now been transferred to her name.

“After the flood trauma, double jubilation came for me. First, the government provided help to reconstruct my flood-damaged house,” Sonhi told FairPlanet. “I have [also] become the owner of my house, which was beyond my dreams. With this project, a new culture is developing locally where women have property rights to their houses.” 

The Pakistan flood reconstruction effort underscores a new trend where women’s needs are being prioritised more than ever in climate resilience plans across South Asia, according to Maryam Shabbir Abbasi, a sustainable development policy scholar at the University of Vermon in the US.

“Efforts have been made to ensure that policies and strategies are gender-responsive, aiming to address the specific vulnerabilities and needs of women in the face of climate change-induced disasters.”

Elaborating on initiatives focused on women’s education, training and leadership in disaster management, she emphasised that enabling women to play more active roles in decision-making processes and community resilience building is essential.

“SPHF prioritises women by granting them land ownership to address several critical issues,” Khalid Mehmood Shaikh, chief executive officer of Sindh Peoples Housing for Flood Affectees (SPHF), told Fair Planet.

“This action is prompted by the need to prioritise women in climate resiliency plans because they are disproportionately affected by climate change and natural disasters due to social, economic and cultural limitations. As primary caregivers, securing housing for women benefits children, the elderly and the sick,” Shaikh added.

“Additionally, economic empowerment through land ownership provides women with collateral for credit, income sources and economic security essential for post-disaster recovery.”

A region-wide trend

In neighbouring India, gender-sensitive policies are also being enacted in the wake of climate disasters.

The southern state of Kerala experienced its biggest flood in a century in 2018, resulting in significant loss of lives, infrastructure and cattle. Kuttanad, in the Alappuzha district of Kerala, is particularly flood-prone and climate-vulnerable. Despite suffering major losses, women in Kuttanad are now being included in preparation plans.

This trend was prompted by the increased awareness and documentation of women’s specific needs during disasters, especially following the 2018 floods.

The magnitude of the damage had led to greater discourse about various affected groups, and gender emerged as an important marker for comprehensive interventions.

Mayadevi S, president of the Alappuzha Grama Panchayath, the lowest elected local government body in the state, said that the 2018 floods provided a better understanding of women’s specific needs during a climate crisis. This led to more women being integrated into preparation initiatives, such as training programmes and a WhatsApp group for information exchange.

Climate change worsens gender impacts

Data suggests that climate change has intensified flooding in both countries. A 2023 report by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) states that Asian countries experienced 81 climate hazard events in 2022, with 83 per cent of these being flood and storm-related crises.

India’s government data indicates that about 1,256 people lost their lives in floods and related disasters in the first six months of 2023, with severe flash floods increasing by 35 per cent between 2020 and 2022. In Pakistan, the severity of floods also highlights the urgent need to reduce vulnerability to extreme weather events.

And while floods affect human lives in numerous ways, their impact on women is significantly more pronounced.

The United Nations has emphasised the need to integrate women into climate preparation efforts because they are often the first responders to climate disasters. Women have specific needs such as sanitation, access to menstrual hygiene, nutrition and lactation facilities, which become scarce during major climate emergencies like floods.

Twenty-seven-year-old Nisha, who has lived her entire life in Kayalpattinam, Tamil Nadu, India, said she has experienced floods since childhood.

“Women have specific needs when disasters strike, such as menstrual hygiene and access to menstrual products” said Nisha, a divorced single mother with two children. “Sometimes we have to make do with cloth patches until help reaches, because there is also considerable shame associated with speaking about such needs openly.”

She added that whenever floods strike, they have to pack and leave, and the responsibility of ensuring everyone in the house is rescued often falls on her, now that her parents are elderly.

Furthermore, in patriarchal societies, women are often assigned the roles of nurturers and caregivers and are forced to perform unpaid domestic labour, including rebuilding and stabilising homes after a disaster, even at the cost of their own health and mental well-being.

“Each time floods strike, our homes are destroyed, requiring us to restart our lives from scratch,” Sohni from Sindh, Pakistan. “Rebuilding houses is a daunting task, consuming our lifelong savings, and it is especially hard for us women.”

But despite their predicament, women in flood-affected areas of Pakistan and India are finding unexpected empowerment through employment, access to property rights and community leadership opportunities provided by rehabilitation initiatives and enhanced by technological interventions.

Increased mobilisation and gender rights advocacy are prompting more gender-inclusive policies, further supporting women’s advancement.

Access to property 

According to Khalid Mehmood Shaikh of SPHF, So far, of the over 150,000 households completed under the SPHF project, 10,000 women have already been granted property rights.

Until now, women in Pakistan have had limited property rights. Globally, women possess less than 20 per cent of the land, according to the Imarat Institute of Policy Studies (IIPS), an Islamabad-based policy research institute, citing findings by the World Economic Forum in 2017.

According to the Imarat Institute of Policy Studies (IIPS), although the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan guarantees women’s rights to ownership, inheritance rights are often violated by family members through coercion, fraud, fabrication, forgery and cheating. IIPS, referencing the Demographic and Health Survey 2017-18, also states that 97 per cent of women across Pakistan could not inherit land or a house.

The new brick houses, which will be registered in the names of women from flood-affected households in Pakistan, are also elevated in their construction to offer increased resistance to future floodwaters that may surround homes for extended periods.

Along with the government, some NGOs are also contributing to the financial empowerment of flood-affected women. The Heritage Foundation of Pakistan, a local NGO, is working to build one million rain-and-flood-resistant houses to be owned by women in southern Sindh.

They have also initiated interest-free soft loans for affected women to start small businesses.

“We have already provided 6,500 new houses to women,” Yasmeen Lari, an 83-year-old architect and the head of the Heritage Foundation of Pakistan, told FairPlanet. “Additionally, we approved soft loans of PKR 10,000 for 50 women. Within one year, half of them have fully repaid their loans, empowered by their small businesses.” 

Raheela Meghwar, a 40-year-old Hindu woman from Pono village in the Tando Allahyar district, lost her home in the 2022 rains. The Heritage Foundation of Pakistan reconstructed her house and provided her with a PKR 10,000 loan within 10 months.

“I lost all my belongings in the floods. After getting my house reconstructed, I began doing embroidery work with the NGO loan,” Raheela said. “I’m pleased that I managed to repay it within ten months.”

“Girls from the area are approaching me to learn this skill,” she added, “hoping to start their own home-based businesses.”

Empowerment through technology, community leadership

Kuttanad, located in the Alappuzha district of Kerala, India, is a particularly flood-prone and climate-vulnerable area. This vulnerability became painfully evident following the devastating 2018 flood.

Sudharma, the Chairperson for Kudumbasree, a poverty eradication and women empowerment programme implemented by the State Poverty Eradication Mission (SPEM) of the Government of Kerala, said that through consistent efforts, women’s specific needs are now given more priority and recognition.

“After the 2018 floods, we did a field visit and submitted a report where we recommended that women and men have very different needs in times of climate crisis,” she said. “This was based on our understanding from the ground that women are more affected by such calamities. These findings have, in turn, translated into a fair amount of awareness among women.”

She pointed out that in emergencies, Kudumbasree’s relief and vigilance groups coordinate with each other to prioritise which families need to be relocated first. Pregnant women and lactating mothers, she said, are given preference.

“It really helps that Kudumbasree is a women-led group. We are able to specifically focus on the needs of women,” Sudharma added. Sudharma, who has lived her entire life in Kuttanad, has witnessed first-hand how flood relief activities have become more effective in recent years.

Grama Panchayath President Mayadevi S told FairPlanet that women in the area have, over the years, especially after the 2018 floods, received consistent training on how to respond to crises like this, putting them in a better position to take on leadership roles.

“We now have WhatsApp groups of the Jagratha Samithi (Alert Team), and it is easier for women using this technology to disseminate information – since many of them may not be able to come together physically at a particular place,” she said.

She added that people often cannot relocate from climate-vulnerable areas because they may have lived there their entire lives. Empowerment initiatives, particularly those targeted at including women, are positive outcomes of living in such places, she observed.

The months of June and July are the most flood-prone in Kuttanad, and Sudharma explained how preparatory work begins after the first few rains.

Along with women, Kudumbasree also trains children on how to stay safe during extreme flooding, which in turn enables them to help their families and reduces the extra care burden on women.

The role of Kudumbasree in community building and addressing the gender gap in crisis management has been documented only over the past six or seven years. This documentation also shows that places with higher expenditure on women’s empowerment have lower female mortality rates during such calamities.

The path forward

While women’s needs are being met more often than before, experts say more needs to be done.

In Sindh, although the SPHF scheme is becoming a significant empowerment tool for women, not all flood-affected women are satisfied with the government’s housing reconstruction project due to inconsistent implementation of the scheme.

Bhirayee Muneer, a 30-year-old woman from Ali Muhammad Mugheri village, the same place where Sohni is from, was unable to get her house reconstructed under the project.

Like Sohni, Muneer also experienced her life’s third migration due to floods in 2022. “I live with my family with my in-laws in a joint family with a separate room. In the pre-project survey, my name was included for reconstruction; however, the authorities have only reconstructed one room for my in-laws,” Bhirayee told FairPlanet. 

“If torrential rains come again, my valuable belongings and livestock will be vulnerable to floods. Therefore, my family needs a brick house. It is unfair that some people get houses under the government project while others don’t,” she added.

Sudharma from Kerala also feels that while consistent awareness building and training have helped women in the drastically flood-prone Kuttanad, it is important to expand the scope of these efforts.

“In the economically marginalised sections, most women are employed in daily wage labour under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. I feel that climate preparedness awareness should be conducted in such workplaces where women gather,” Sudharma said. 

Nisha’s experience in Tamil Nadu, a state neighbouring Kerala, also highlights that many climate-vulnerable areas need more attention.

Shabbir Abbasi from the University of Vermont emphasised that to empower the women of South Asia, it is crucial to overcome cultural and societal barriers. These barriers, she stressed, limit women’s access to resources, decision-making power and leadership opportunities.

“There is a need to share data and successful experiences between India and Pakistan so that women in both countries can benefit,” she said. “Collaboration between governments, academia and civil society can play an important role in this regard. Platforms such as the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) can be pivotal to gaining mutual benefit.”

She suggested creating a women-led consortium consisting of representatives from academia, farming, business, energy, government and civil society from both countries.

She emphasised that women, proven to be great leaders in any industry, can bring effective solutions to climate-led disasters in India and Pakistan.