Keiko Ikeda
Shizuoka University
Ikeda.Keiko@shizuoka.ac.jp
Abstract. This paper seeks to illustrate notable features of female leaders, their activities and positions in community-based disaster risk management organizations in Japan. It intends to offer the key to an understanding of enabling environment that women are accepted as disaster managers by the community, and gender-and-diversity-responsive disaster management policies fully function. Based on hard-won lessons from the Great East Japan Disaster (2011), the government of Japan amended its Basic Disaster Management Plan and the Basic Plan for Gender Equality so as to accommodate different needs of women and men, at the same time to promote women’s participation at all stages of the disaster cycle. By doing so, the national government intend to create resilient and sustainable community-based disaster management system. This policy was embodied in operational guidelines issued by the national government, such as the guideline for management of evacuation centers, emergency stockpiles supplies, training of local disaster managers and others. However, there are considerable gap between policies and practices. According to a recent survey research with all local governments in Japan on progress of gender mainstreaming in local disaster risk management policies in which the author is a member of the survey team (Osawa eds., 2019), there is remarkable difference of progress between national and local governments. Among local governments, progress of municipal governments was slower than prefectural governments. When it comes to community-based disaster organizations, the progress is even slower. Community organizations for disaster management (jishubousaikai) in Japan are conventionally established under each residents’ association (jichikai) or neighbourhood association (chounaikai). Men in their 60’s and 70’s, retired but active, are the main members of jishubousaikai. Women of the same generation also participate in activities of jishubousaikai, but they are seldom engaged in decision-making because of strict gender divisions of labour that characterize this generation. Younger generations with more egalitarian gender attitudes are generally not very interested in disaster management activities. Although community organizations for disaster management in Japan has been an object of study for a long time, little is known about women’s participation and their activities, especially after major policy amendments following the Great East Japan Disaster. Through case studies of three jishubousaikai where active and voluntary female leadership are observed, this paper investigates how some basic ideas on ‘gender needs’ (Moser 1993) and ‘female leadership’ differs among key actor in different layers of disaster risk management governance to shape gap between policies and practices. In the policy documents, ‘strategic gender need’ are emphasized to promote decision-making power of women, but in the grassroots level, ‘practical gender needs’ which are in line with conventional gender norms and division of labour are given more importance. The female leaders utilize the community discourse to legitimize their new leadership role as disaster managers, which gives clue to bridge the gap of policies and practices. The data were obtained from key informant interviews in three communities in in Shizuoka Prefecture, where another gigantic Tokai Earthquake is predicted to occur.
Keywords: community-based disaster risk management organization (CBDRMO), disaster risk management policy, gender needs, women’s leadership
