Women in Disasters and Conflicts in India: Interventions in View of the Millennium Development Goals

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) with their holistic perspective of development are focused on different issues of vulnerability. This article highlights the situation of women in disasters and the challenges in achieving the MDGs with special reference to India. It is accepted that there is no disaster without human engagement and that issues of differential impact on genders is an essential consideration for recovery. The international guidelines on disaster management and intervention have a considerable focus on gender equality, balance, mainstreaming, and sensitive programing, yet the situation is quite grim. India still lacks separate policy guidelines on gender aspects in disaster. In the twenty-first century, India has witnessed a series of disasters in different parts of the country. The author's personal experiences of working in intervention programs of these disasters showed that gender vulnerability depends on various factors like the intensity of the disaster impact, local sociocultural perspectives, effective disaster intervention strategies, the specific focus on issues of women in training of personnel, and gender-sensitive disaster intervention programs in the community. In the context of the MDGs, while development has become a priority concern to end age-old inequalities in society, the added challenge of disasters needs considerable focus on gender inequalities to achieve the goal of gender equity.