This book investigates the widespread and persistent relationship
between disasters and gender-based violence, drawing on new research
with victim-survivors to show how the two forms of harm constitute
'layered disasters' in particular places, intensifying and reproducing
one another.
The evidence is now overwhelming that disasters and gender-based
violence are closely connected, not just in moments of crisis but in the
years that follow as the social, economic and environmental impacts of
disasters play out. This book addresses two key gaps in research. First,
it examines what causes the relationship between disasters and
gender-based violence to be so widespread and so enduring. Second, it
highlights victim-survivors' own accounts of gender-based violence and
disasters. It does so by presenting findings from original research on
cyclones and flooding in Bangladesh and the UK and a review of global
evidence on the Covid-19 pandemic. Drawing on feminist theories, it
conceptualises the coincidence of gender-based violence, disasters and
other aggravating factors in particular places as 'layered disasters.'
Taking an intersectional approach that emphasises the connections
between culture, place, patriarchy, racism, poverty,
settler-colonialism, environmental degradation and climate change, the
authors show the significance of gender-based violence in creating
vulnerability to future disasters. Forefronting victim-survivors'
experiences and understandings, the book explores the important role of
trauma, and how those affected go about the process of survival and
recovery. Understanding disasters as layered casts light on why tackling
gender-based violence must be a key priority in disaster planning,
management and recovery. The book concludes by exploring critiques of
existing formal responses, which often ignore or underplay gender-based
violence.
The book will be of interest to all those interested in understanding
the causes and impacts of disasters, as well as scholars and researchers
of gender and gender-based violence.
