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Disaster Risk Reduction, Recovery

Bangladesh women lack capacity

Ahead of only Pakistan in South Asia

Staff Correspondent
Bangladesh is the second worst country after Pakistan in South Asia in terms of women's capacity for disaster risk reduction and recovery, according to an international report.
Low access to power, institutional resources, transportation, sanitation and technology as well as a huge gap between policies and implementation are the key reasons for women's poor capacity to deal with the challenges, says the report.
Among the South Asian nations, Bhutan is the best performer followed by Sri Lanka, Nepal, India and Maldives, according to South Asia Women's Resilience Index.
The Economist Intelligence Unit prepared the report with support of ActionAid on the basis of 68 indicators in four categories - economic, infrastructure, institutional and social.
Officials of ActionAid Bangladesh yesterday shared the report at a press conference at the Dhaka Reporters' Unity. Out of 100 marks in each indicator, Bangladesh got 48.6 in economic, 22.3 in infrastructure, 45.4 in institutional and 43.8 in social indicator.
The report says Bangladeshi women represent the majority of microfinance borrowers — 90.1 percent - but their access to credit at both formal and informal institutions are limited. Besides, women own only 34.9 percent of total bank accounts.
When it comes to infrastructure, Bangladesh "does have many aspects of an end-to-end early warning system, with improvements shown in the success of the response to more recent cyclones," it says.
However, most infrastructures don't follow building code while the road infrastructure is vulnerable to disasters such as flood and cyclone.
The report also says women representation in different institutions is very poor in Bangladesh. For example, women make up just 3.9 percent of police force.
Women are disadvantaged by a lack of legal awareness or access to "institutional recourse" and they presently don't have inheritance rights to properties.
Moreover, socio-cultural norms restrict a large proportion of women to domestic responsibilities and limited access to education and health.
Bangladesh has suffered extensive human and financial losses in the past 20 years due to natural and man-made disasters that claimed around 15,719 lives and caused a loss of around $13 billion, it said.
The report was prepared between March and June this year by following a methodology that included review of documents and interview of persons concerned.
In the report, Japan was taken as the benchmark since the country succeeded in achieving significant progress in building women's capacity in disaster resilience.
At yesterday's press conference, ActionAid Bangladesh Country Director Farah Kabir said the government has per capita allocation of $5.3 for disaster relief. More government investments must be ensured to tackle the disaster risk management.
Necessary steps should be taken to ensure women empowerment and enhance their capacity in disaster resilience and gender-sensitive policy planning. It would help them take leadership to address the challenges, she said.