Hi Jennifer: Your work will make a real contribution--please keep all of us
informed about how to receive copies of publications down the road. For
comparative purposes, you'll want to touch bases with the Disaster
Mitigation Institute [[log in to unmask]] and one of the NGOs they work with on
livelihood security issues, the Self-Employed Women's Association,  both in
Ahmedabad and both actively involved  in mitigation activities in rural and
urban settings.  Last year I worked with them a bit trying to document some
of the impacts of the Jan '01 quake and drought on rural women's livelihoods
in Surendranager (a region at risk of being 'out of the loop' w/ respect to
recovery assistance). You'll find some discussion of low-income women's
innovative efforts to mitigate drought conditions in the paper summarizing
DMI's Surendranagar research on the Radix website (Enarson, "We Want Work")
but I'd suggest contacting Mihir Bhatt directly to pursue this--also Madhavi
Ariyabandu and Duryog Nivaran ([log in to unmask]) for other regional
examples.If you want to pursue this line of inquiry, you'll find quite a bit
of attention in the gender and disaster literature to grassroots women's
work, again in both rural and urban contexts, mitigating environmental and
social hazards as well as responding to disasters of all kinds. I'd suggest
taking a look at the Gender and Disaster Network
(www.anglia.ac.uk/geography/gdn). In particular, you might follow links to
the recent UN Division for the Advancement of Women conference in NY on
environmental mitigation, disaster prevention and the need for a gender
perspective. The paper I read there was based on international reports of
women's efforts to identify and reduce hazards of all kinds, documented in a
DAW expert group meeting held in Ankara last fall.  Basta! Good luck w/ you
work and please add me to the list of people who want to know more as your
work progresses. All the best from Colorado. Elaine
___________________________
Elaine Enarson, Ph.D.
Independent Scholar
Institute for Women's Studies and Services
Metropolitan State College of Denver
Denver, Colorado  US

Tel:    303/670-1834
Fax:    303/679-0938
Email:  [log in to unmask]
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