Gender vulnerability to climate change and natural hazards: the case of Tropical Cyclone Winston, Fiji

Climate change and amplified natural hazards put Pacific Island Countries (PICs) particularly at risk. Even though climate change is a global issue, its impacts vary between and even within countries. In particular, many scholars as well as policy makers see women in these societies amongst the most vulnerable groups due to gender-specific roles, unequal power relations in (household) decision making and lack of access and control over resources and information (Arora-Jonsson, 2011 ; Denton, 2002 ; Kaijser & Kronsell, 2014; Terry, 2009 ). Gender vulnerability to climate change and related hazards is a relatively new policy topic, both globally and locally in the South Pacific. In Fiji, local women organisations such as the Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre (FWCC) or Fiji Women’s Rights Movement (FWRM) have demanded gender mainstreaming into climate change policy for many years ( FWRM, 2018 ). However, national and regional policy frameworks and guidelines only recently acknowledged the need to include climate change as an emerging issue for achieving gender equality ( Government of Fiji, 2017 ). This lack of analytical focus on gendered vulnerabilities to climate change and related hazards in Fiji is also found in academic research. Adequate support to eliminate or reduce gendered vulnerability requires a deeper understanding of the multiple causes and factors that contribute to women’s structural vulnerability in the first place and how these may affect women in the wake of climate change and natural hazards. In this chapter, we aim to contribute to closing this gap and explore the gender disparity in vulnerability to climate change related hazards and risks in Fiji