Women's Participation in Emergencies in Mutare District

A gender analysis, based on desk research and review of policy and legal instruments, mapping the spaces and barriers for women's participation in emergency response (ER) in Mutare District, Manicaland. Set against the tropical Cyclone Idai (March 2019), recurrent droughts and floods, and the COVID-19 pandemic, it argues that women and men experience emergencies differently and that ER architecture must be anchored in a gender-sensitive legal and policy framework. Produced under the Evidence and Collaboration for Inclusive Development (ECID) project.

• COVID-19-induced national lockdowns disrupted health and economic systems and placed a heavy care burden on women, while a spike in SGBV left many women and girls confined at home with their abusers.
• Women were severely under-represented in the Covid-19 Provincial and District Taskforce structures in Mutare (several sub-taskforces had no women at all), leaving no one to negotiate women's rights and priorities.
• Cyclone Idai left an estimated 4,000 households in Mutare needing shelter; women and girls made up the majority of those affected and faced heightened risk of GBV, transactional sex and lack of privacy at displacement centres.
• Pregnant and lactating women faced home births and untrained birth attendants after floods cut access to maternal, newborn and child health services.
• Women in polygamous unions receive aid through the male head of household, a source of conflict; women and girls with disabilities face compounded, intersecting barriers.

• Government should mainstream gender across the whole ER cycle - provide separate toilet and bathing facilities at displacement centres, equal employment/livelihood opportunities in recovery, and collect sex-, age- and disability-disaggregated data.
• Establish hotlines and toll-free lines for abuse survivors and train women to draw up safety plans; equip health workers to give first-line 'LIVES' support.
• Ensure response and recovery committees have equal numbers of women and men, and register lone female and polygamous-family household heads and other marginalised groups.
• Civil society should consult women on the time and place of distributions, site distribution points closer to communities, and support women's political agency and civic engagement rather than top-down engagement.
• Improve clarity and coordination of disability-inclusion policies so the rights of persons with disabilities are realised in relief and development efforts.