Red River Basin Disaster Information Network
On-Line Workshop
September 30, 1999 -- 12:00 Noon CST

Women, Work, and Family in the 1997 Red River Valley Flood
Ten Lessons Learned

Elaine Enarson, Ph. D.
Researcher

Online Transcript
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Text Transcript

"How do women's family and work roles engage them in flood preparations and response? What special needs or issues arise for specific groups of women? What resources do they bring to their families and communities during flood recovery? And how can other communities benefit from the experiences of women in this flood?"

These were the questions on Dr. Enarson's mind when she interviewed women in the region during field visits six, twelve, and eighteen months after the flood. She frames the answers she found during the course of her research as "Ten Lessons Learned" which provide the basis for a planning checklist that can be used by any community not only to prepare for women's needs, but also, to take advantage of the resources they have to offer.

Download Report (MS Word File, 9 pages)
Ten Planning Questions for Community Disaster Planners

About Elaine Enarson
Elaine Enarson has recently completed a posting as visiting scholar at the University of British Columbia's Disaster Preparedness Resources Centre, focusing on gender issues in social impact analysis. She earned her PhD in sociology from the University of Oregon (1981) and has taught at Florida International University and the University of Nevada, Reno, where she was the director of women's studies. She is also a former director of the Nevada Network Against Domestic Violence.

Introduced to disaster sociology by moving to Miami just in time to lose her home, she has researched women's disaster experiences in South Dade County, written on women's housing needs, and studied domestic violence and disaster in Canada and the US. She has also published a number of scholarly articles on gender issues in disaster sociology, and organized and lectured in Women in Disaster: Exploring the Issues, a two-day conference for women's services and provincial emergency practitioners in British Columbia. With Betty Morrow, she is the editor of the cross-cultural reader The Gendered Terrain of Disaster: Through Women's Eyes (l997, Greenwood Publications).