The Gendered Nature of Natural Disasters: The Impact of Catastrophic Events on the Gender Gap in Life Expectancy, 1981–2002

Natural disasters do not affect people equally. In fact, a vulnerability approach to disasters would suggest that
inequalities in exposure and sensitivity to risk as well as inequalities in access to resources, capabilities, and
opportunities systematically disadvantage certain groups of people, rendering them more vulnerable to the impact
of natural disasters. In this article we address the specific vulnerability of girls and women with respect to
mortality from natural disasters and their aftermath. Biological and physiological differences between the sexes
are unlikely to explain large-scale gender differences in mortality rates. Social norms and role behaviors provide
some further explanation, but what is likely to matter most is the everyday socioeconomic status of women. In a
sample of up to 141 countries over the period 1981 to 2002 we analyze the effect of disaster strength and its
interaction with the socioeconomic status of women on the change in the gender gap in life expectancy. We find,
first, that natural disasters lower the life expectancy of women more than that of men. In other words, natural
disasters (and their subsequent impact) on average kill more women than men or kill women at an earlier age
than men. Since female life expectancy is generally higher than that of males, for most countries natural disasters
narrow the gender gap in life expectancy. Second, the stronger the disaster (as approximated by the number of
people killed relative to population size), the stronger this effect on the gender gap in life expectancy. That is,
major calamities lead to more severe impacts on female life expectancy (relative to that of males) than do smaller
disasters. Third, the higher women’s socioeconomic status, the weaker is this effect on the gender gap in life
expectancy. Taken together our results show that it is the socially constructed gender-specific vulnerability of
females built into everyday socioeconomic patterns that lead to the relatively higher female disaster mortality
rates compared to men.