Women’s Empowerment in International Risk Governance? Feminist NGO Representation and Impact within UNISDR Processes and Multilateral Agreements (1990-2015)

The Third World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction headed by the UN Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) took place in Sendai, Japan in March 2015 and aimed to reduce the gaps of the Hyogo Framework for Action. Despite being a cross-cutting theme, the gendered content of DRR agreements has been sparse and poorly implemented. Based upon analysis of the Agreements and official statements of gender and disaster advocates, ethnographic fieldwork and qualitative interviews, this paper analyzes the feminist content and participatory impact of the critical actors and advocacy coalitions (Women’s Major Group) engaging in negotiations over DRR Agreements ratified by Member States over the last 25 years. We first historically track the changing conversations on gender/disasters (Enarson 1988) and risk governance (Jasanoff 2010) to show the evolution of critical interdisciplinary thinking on the intersections of critical democratic risk governance (Steele 2016). Secondly, through an analysis of the international texts, we show an increasing success in integrating feminist intersectional understandings of gender. Third, our analysis of the 2015 UNISDR process shows that the consultation mechanisms themselves assume “identity group silos” that are counter-productive to both intersectional analyses of DRR vulnerability and resilience, as well as women’s leadership within UNISDR risk governance processes. To illustrate this point, we highlight the rare synergies that emerged between the Japanese government positions and Japanese feminist advocates, that tactically supported the WMG’s success in the 2015 process. Notwithstanding these positive synergies, however, we note the structural limits to women’s representation in DRR governance given that both formal UNISDR processes and government funding streams support Member States and largely malestream civil society organizations. This persists despite feminist research and expertise on the gendered interdependence of household, community, economic resilience, and inclusive decision-making, and despite the pivotal position rhetorically accorded to women by UNISDR in their formal discourse.