ABSTRACT
This article describes the first results from a research project on gender-differentiated vulnerability
to drought in Nicaragua. The main hypothesis of the project is that women and men are affected
differently by drought due to the gendered division of labor and assets, as well as cross-level
institutional interactions. This article explores this hypothesis using an adapted version of the
Community Capitals Framework (CCF), developed by Flora, Flora, and Frey (2004). More
specifically, the adapted version of the CCF is used to analyze the impacts of droughts on a
number of interviewed men and women living in a community in the dry zone of Nicaragua
as well as the capacity to choose strategies used by the interviewees to reduce their drought
vulnerability. Hence, both the downward and upward spirals faced by the interviewees are
described as well as how the downward spiral of increasing vulnerability can be reversed.
