Why women’s leadership strengthens disaster resilience and environmental stewardship

By Reynard Loki

On February 26, 1852, the HMS Birkenhead struck a cluster of rocks off the coast of South Africa. With only a few lifeboats for the 638 people aboard, Captain Robert Salmond ordered the women and children to board first while the men stayed behind, attempting to stabilize the ship. The Birkenhead disaster helped cement what became known as the “Birkenhead drill,” widely invoked in the Victorian era as the origin of the “women and children first” maritime code.

While practical in its moment, the ethos helped entrench a stereotype: in times of crisis, women are the ones who are helped, not the helpers. Yet history, sociology, and contemporary disaster risk reduction (DRR) practices show the opposite. Women are not only capable responders but often possess critical knowledge and leadership skills essential to community resilience.

According to the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report (2021), human‑caused warming has already increased the frequency and intensity of extreme events such as heatwaves, heavy rainfall and floods, droughts, and tropical storms—trends that are expected to worsen with further warming. The rising scale of risk makes it crucial to understand and elevate the role women play in building resilient communities. Around the globe, women leverage lived experience, community networks, and leadership skills to strengthen disaster preparedness and response. Historical assumptions, global case studies, and policy insights reveal that women transform DRR, often turning vulnerability into leadership.

The story of the Birkenhead is emblematic. It portrays women as passive beneficiaries of male heroism—a narrative repeated across centuries. From shipwrecks to hurricanes, disasters have often been framed through a lens of chaos-command-control, assuming that top-down, male-led management is the natural order and that women are primarily those to be “protected.”

Disaster sociologists Elaine Enarson and Betty Hearn Morrow challenge these assumptions in their 1998 book The Gendered Terrain of Disaster. They argue that women’s experiences—managing households during crises, organizing community responses, and navigating overlapping vulnerabilities—offer insights that traditional disaster management often overlooks. “In the process of coming into womanhood, girls learn practical strategies for disaster preparedness and crisis management,” they write. “The legacy of their mothers and grandmothers—in impoverished peasant societies and on the fringes of the world’s great cities, but also among the new American homeless, farm migrants, and economically marginal families—is simply how to survive the relentless crises of everyday life.”

From Filipina mothers evacuating children during typhoons and African American grandmothers raising their grandchildren, to Burmese women distributing dignity kits and health information to women and girls during flood recovery and destitute Bangladeshi women navigating daily life, women around the globe have demonstrated strength and resilience in the face of hardship, developing practical strategies that formal agencies frequently fail to recognize.

Globally, disasters disproportionately affect women. The UN estimates that 80 percent of people displaced by climate change are women, a result of structural inequalities in income, mobility, land access, and political representation. Recognizing women’s active role in disaster planning is not just equitable—it is essential for effective risk reduction.

Everyday Expertise: Women Preparing for Crisis Before It Strikes

Women’s crisis management skills often take root long before a formal emergency unfolds. In many cultures, girls grow up learning practical preparedness strategies from mothers and grandmothers, including resource management, food storage, caregiving, early warning signs, and community networking. These skills become lifelines in the face of disasters.

Men who lose family members in disasters sometimes learn these lessons later, through tragedy, observing the dangers of inadequate infrastructure, unreliable early warning systems, or unsafe housing. Integrating women’s experiential knowledge into local and national planning strengthens household and community resilience.

Women Leading Disaster Risk Reduction

Laos: Community-Based Early Warning Systems

In Xiangkhouang Province, Laos, Village Disaster Management Committees supported by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP)—including approximately 30 percent women—have helped map evacuation routes, designate safe shelters, organize stockpiles, and disseminate early-warning information. Women’s understanding of household needs, local geography, and social networks ensured that preparedness strategies were practical and effective.

From Southeast Asia to the Pacific Islands, women’s leadership consistently enhances disaster preparedness, ensuring strategies reflect local realities rather than top-down assumptions.

Papua New Guinea: Participatory Approaches Strengthening Self-Efficacy

A participatory‑research project in several Papua New Guinea villages used community consultations, mapping exercises, and “guided‑discovery” workshops to map hazards, assess vulnerabilities, and design grassroots DRR strategies. Women contributed crucial insights on sanitation, flood patterns, and food security, enhancing preparedness plans and community cohesion. Communities gained ownership over risk assessments and developed more relevant disaster‑preparedness plans.

Mexico: Women Agents of Change and Environmental Stewardship

In Jalisco, Mexico, women are transforming community resilience through Children International’s three-stage “Women Agents of Change” program. Volunteer mothers complete a year-long curriculum covering gender equality, women’s rights, self-esteem, and violence prevention, advance to leadership training mentoring children, and finally develop micro-enterprise projects to strengthen household and community stability.

Alejandra, a mother of three, joined the program after volunteering. She gained practical skills in sewing and dressmaking, launched a small business, and became a mentor and community leader, demonstrating how women’s economic empowerment complements disaster preparedness and resilience.

Across South Asia, similar initiatives show that when women lead local projects, communities gain practical solutions for water, sanitation, and risk mitigation, demonstrating that empowerment directly translates into resilience.

Nepal: Women Leading Water and Sanitation Projects

In Nepal, community‑level DRR efforts increasingly center on women’s leadership. Local groups and donor-backed initiatives train women in preparedness, risk mapping, response planning, and community‑led mitigation—affirming their role not just as victims but as proactive agents of resilience. As UNESCO notes, “Mainstreaming gender considerations into disaster preparedness and education contributes significantly to reducing disaster impacts and improving sustainable development.”

A similar pattern emerges in Western contexts, where women-led networks—such as Scotland’s water governance initiatives—strengthen resilience by improving coordination, knowledge-sharing, and sector-wide inclusion.

Scotland: Strengthening Water Governance Through Women’s Leadership

Scotland has emerged as a notable example of gender-inclusive water governance—an area where women’s participation has historically been limited worldwide. Efforts to promote gender balance in environmental leadership have led to more women serving on water-management boards, regulatory bodies, and community decision-making groups. This shift reflects a growing recognition that effective water governance requires not only technical expertise but also community insight, social equity, and strong public communication—qualities that directly support climate and disaster resilience.

Complementing these national efforts, the Community of Women in Water (CWiW) has become an influential network supporting women working across the water sector. CWiW provides mentorship, technical guidance, and professional connections to more than 1,000 women globally, including researchers, engineers, policy experts, chemists, program managers, and graduate students. Its mission is to amplify women’s contributions to water solutions and strengthen disaster and climate resilience through peer learning and sustained knowledge-sharing.

Research from the World Bank emphasizes that understanding the differentiated ways women and men interact as users of water and sanitation services—and increasing women’s inclusion in these projects—can improve service provision and cost recovery. Better cost recovery enables providers to expand infrastructure into underserved areas, while women’s participation also reduces barriers to economic and public engagement, generating broader social and economic benefits. These findings reinforce CWiW’s focus on gender equity as essential for effective water governance.

CWiW’s model also highlights a critical gap: women remain underrepresented in the water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) workforce, comprising roughly 17 percent globally as of 2014. A 2019 World Bank analysis confirms that fewer than one in five employees in water utilities are women, with particularly low representation in technical or managerial roles. By fostering mentorship, peer learning, and leadership development, CWiW helps close this gap, strengthening the sector’s ability to respond effectively to climate-related water challenges.

Together, Scotland’s institutional reforms and CWiW’s community-driven support illustrate that Western contexts are increasingly recognizing the importance of women’s leadership. When women participate fully in water governance and community initiatives, disaster-preparedness strategies become more equitable, locally informed, and resilient—demonstrating how leadership at the community and sectoral level can translate into broader environmental stewardship and sustainable resilience.

Women as Environmental Leaders

Building on disaster preparedness leadership, women shape broader environmental and community resilience, translating local knowledge and organizational skills into sustainable stewardship. Research consistently shows that women are more likely than men to support environmental protection, climate resilience, and pro-social policies. Women tend to prioritize ethical, community-centered approaches, while men more often focus on technical or economic perspectives. Studies suggest that higher empathy, collaborative problem-solving, and lower social dominance orientation among women contribute to these pro-environmental attitudes.

Communities that integrate women’s environmental leadership benefit from more holistic strategies—balancing ecological stewardship, public health, and long-term sustainability—and highlighting the need for inclusion in policymaking that shapes disaster preparedness, recovery, and climate resilience.

Policy Leadership and the Need for Representation

Equal representation in disaster policy and planning leads to more equitable and effective outcomes. The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (2015–2030) emphasizes inclusive governance as a cornerstone of global resilience, but women remain underrepresented in local councils, technical working groups, and national DRR committees. Structural biases and limited access to education, financing, or leadership opportunities often restrict participation.

When women are included, policies incorporate social networks, health, environmental sustainability, and the needs of children and older adults. Education programs, microfinance initiatives, leadership workshops, and mentorship networks amplify women’s voices and capacity to lead. Evidence shows that DRR strategies are most effective and sustainable when women are fully integrated into planning, budgeting, and implementation. Embedding women’s perspectives at both local and national levels allows lessons learned in communities to scale into actionable strategies that improve resilience for all.

Faith-based and community advocacy organizations also highlight how climate-driven disasters continue to affect women and children disproportionately. In a December 2025 press statement, United Women in Faith reflected on two tragedies that month—a preventable high-rise fire in Hong Kong that killed more than 150 people and Cyclone Ditwah in Sri Lanka and South Asia, which caused more than 400 deaths and left more than 300 people missing—as illustrative of a broader global pattern. Ilka Vega, the organization’s executive for Economic and Environmental Justice, noted that these events exemplify a trend of disasters “exacerbated by climate change,” where frontline communities, “particularly women and children,” bear the worst impacts “despite being least responsible for the climate crisis.” She added that communities cannot “wait for the next disaster to take hundreds more lives,” underscoring the urgency of gender-responsive policies, inclusive disaster governance, and investments in women’s leadership to strengthen resilience and ensure equitable recovery.

Empowered Women Mean More Resilient Communities

Across every region, one lesson is unmistakable: when women move from “being protected” to participating as planners, strategists, and leaders, disaster resilience improves for everyone. Expanding the traditional “three C’s” of emergency response—Command, Control, and Coordination—to include “community participation” underscores the need for institutional approaches to evolve and embrace local knowledge and inclusion. Female perspectives—rooted in caregiving, community networks, cultural knowledge, and frontline experience—turn abstract risk-reduction goals into everyday practices that households and neighborhoods can sustain.

Three practical takeaways emerge from the global evidence. First, integrating women meaningfully into disaster and climate programs ensures early warning systems, health interventions, and preparedness plans reflect the realities of daily life. Second, empowerment programs create ripple effects: as women gain leadership, communication, enterprise, or technical skills, community trust deepens, household resilience rises, and effective management increases. Third, investing in women leads to measurable long-term outcomes, from higher school attendance and workforce productivity to reduced vulnerability during recovery periods.

For policymakers, NGOs, and community leaders, the path forward is clear: establish participatory planning structures guaranteeing women equal representation and decision-making power; design training programs building technical skills and social networks; fund women-led enterprises, which often double as hubs for communication and mutual aid; and scale effective strategies by embedding women’s voices in local committees, national climate policies, and international frameworks. Across continents and contexts, the evidence is clear: when women lead, plan, and organize at every level—from households to national frameworks—communities become more resilient, adaptive, and better able to face both immediate and long-term challenges.

The phrase “women and children first” can be reimagined. Rather than symbolizing passive protection, it can remind us that women are indispensable leaders, helpers, organizers, and knowledge holders. Across Laos, Papua New Guinea, Mexico, Nepal, and beyond, women are redefining how communities prepare for and respond to disasters. Empowering women is not only a matter of equity—it is a cornerstone of global resilience. By acknowledging their expertise and expanding their leadership, societies become better equipped to face the accelerating challenges of climate change and natural hazards. In the modern world, women are not merely the protected—they are the protectors.

Reynard Loki is a co-founder of the Observatory, where he is the environment and animal rights editor. He is also a writing fellow at the Independent Media Institute, where he serves as the editor of Earth | Food | Life.

An earlier version of this article originally appeared on JustMeans. This version was produced by Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute. It is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).