Weathering the storm: women's preparedness as a form of resilience to weather-related hazards in Northern Australia

Abstract

[Extract] This chapter goes some way to meet the challenge issued by Weichselgartner and Obersteiner (2002) to resist seeing people as "passive victims" of hazards, to shift the focus from vulnerability to resilience, and to focus on adaptive capacities already evident in communities. The research was conducted on the assumption that there would be women who had adaptive strategies for dealing with wet season hazards in northern Australia. This is in accordance with the views of Morrow and Phillips (1999) and Fordham (1999) that women's experiences are in some ways unique and embedded with varying levels of vulnerability but also with differences in capacities to respond and be resilient. It was decided to specifically approach women with dependents because we assumed that their responsibilities would make them more aware of the types of strategies that were necessary to deal with the natural hazard. As well, we recognized that women are still those mainly responsible for caring for the young and the aged (Poole, 2005; Poole & Issaes, 1997). By identifying the different strategies that women used then this information could be passed on to other women, particularly newcomers to an area who may have little experience of the local hazards.