The gendered nature of natural disasters:: The impact of catastrophic events on the gender gap in life expectancy, 1981-2002
The gendered nature of natural disasters:: The impact of catastrophic events on the gender gap in life expectancy, 1981-2002
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DOI：
10.1111/j.1467-8306.2007.00563.x
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发表时间：
2007-09-01
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Pluemper, Thomas
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Neumayer, Eric;Pluemper, Thomas
自然灾害对人们的影响是不平等的。事实上，对灾害的脆弱性方法表明，在风险暴露和敏感性方面的不平等，以及在获得资源、能力和机会方面的不平等，系统性地使某些群体处于不利地位，使他们更容易受到自然灾害的影响。在本文中，我们讨论女孩和妇女在自然灾害及其后果造成的死亡率方面的具体脆弱性。两性之间的生物和生理差异不太可能解释死亡率的大规模性别差异。社会规范和角色行为提供了一些进一步的解释，但最重要的可能是女性的日常社会经济地位。在1981年至2002年的141个国家的样本中，我们分析了灾害强度及其与妇女社会经济地位的相互作用对预期寿命性别差距变化的影响。我们发现，首先，自然灾害对女性预期寿命的影响比男性更大。换句话说，自然灾害（及其后续影响）平均导致女性死亡的人数多于男性，或者女性死亡的年龄比男性早。由于女性的预期寿命一般高于男性，对大多数国家来说，自然灾害缩小了预期寿命方面的性别差距。其次，灾难越严重（以死亡人数与人口规模之比来估算），对预期寿命的性别差异的影响就越大。也就是说，重大灾害对女性预期寿命的影响（相对于男性而言）比较小的灾害更严重。第三，女性的社会经济地位越高，这种对预期寿命性别差距的影响就越弱。综上所述，我们的研究结果表明，与男性相比，女性在日常社会经济模式中存在的社会建构的性别特异性脆弱性导致了女性相对较高的灾害死亡率。
Natural disasters do not affect people equally. In fact, a vulnerability approach to disasters would suggest that inequalities in exposure and sensitivity to risk as well as inequalities in access to resources, capabilities, and opportunities systematically disadvantage certain groups of people, rendering them more vulnerable to the impact of natural disasters. In this article we address the specific vulnerability of girls and women with respect to mortality from natural disasters and their aftermath. Biological and physiological differences between the sexes are unlikely to explain large-scale gender differences in mortality rates. Social norms and role behaviors provide some further explanation, but what is likely to matter most is the everyday socioeconomic status of women. In a sample of up to 141 countries over the period 1981 to 2002 we analyze the effect of disaster strength and its interaction with the socioeconomic status of women on the change in the gender gap in life expectancy. We find, first, that natural disasters lower the life expectancy of women more than that of men. In other words, natural disasters (and their subsequent impact) on average kill more women than men or kill women at an earlier age than men. Since female life expectancy is generally higher than that of males, for most countries natural disasters narrow the gender gap in life expectancy. Second, the stronger the disaster (as approximated by the number of people killed relative to population size), the stronger this effect on the gender gap in life expectancy. That is, major calamities lead to more severe impacts on female life expectancy (relative to that of males) than do smaller disasters. Third, the higher women's socioeconomic status, the weaker is this effect on the gender gap in life expectancy. Taken together our results show that it is the socially constructed gender-specific vulnerability of females built into everyday socioeconomic patterns that lead to the relatively higher female disaster mortality rates compared to men.