ABSTRACT

The ((official story" of disasters generally overlooks women's experiences as victims, as well as responders. In this chapter, we use the case of Hurricane Andrew to illustrate the need to account more effectively for the experiences and insights of women if we are to understand better households and communities hit by disaster. Our qualitative findings are synthesized around four composite profiles which we develop to introduce some important themes which emerged from our work. In keeping with our goal of illustrating the potential of a gendered analysis for advancing theoretical and empirical work, as well as our argument that a better understanding of women's diverse experiences will promote more effective disaster planning and response, we end by suggesting a series of research questions and proposing a set of policy recommendations to disaster planners and responders.