A New Year’s Day earthquake that hit Ishikawa Prefecture's Noto Peninsula placed a renewed spotlight on the need to incorporate gender perspectives in disaster prevention and relief, including the operation of evacuation centers and the stockpiling of necessary supplies.
Following the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, many women faced difficulties as evacuation shelters lacked places to change clothes or breastfeed.
Some municipalities in Okinawa Prefecture are assigning women to departments in charge of disaster preparedness in order to address the issue.
Female deputy mayor
According to a Cabinet Office survey on municipalities’ stockpiles of items for women, babies and people in need of care, as of December 2022 the village of Zamami — with a population of some 900 — had in its stockpile six of the nine items listed in the survey as necessary for women, including expectant and nursing mothers, and 10 of the 11 items listed as necessary for babies and infants. In this respect, the village did much better than other municipalities in the prefecture.
Its stockpiles included sanitary shorts, and crime prevention buzzers and whistles — items stocked by only a small percentage of municipalities nationwide. The village is the only municipality in Okinawa to stockpile nursing pads.
The Zamami Municipal Government said decisions on what to stockpile were made at a conference of manager-level officials.
“The fact that a female deputy mayor is a member of the conference must have led to a substantial number of items (on the list) being stockpiled," said an official in charge.
The stockpiling was funded by a subsidy offered to projects that help strengthen Okinawa’s tourism and disaster prevention and relief capabilities. The Zamami government also received advice from the private sector.
It plans to allocate the village’s budget to update items that are nearing expiration and maintain the current level of stockpiles.
Evacuation shelter operation manual
The city of Naha, meanwhile, created a dedicated team of women in 2014 to review disaster prevention and relief measures from women’s perspectives.
Around 10 local government officials and fire brigade members serve one-year tenures on the team, engaging in such activities as presenting proposals for the Naha government’s operations during disasters.
The team contributed to the creation of an operation manual for evacuation centers that takes into account considerations for women, children and sexual minorities.
The number of women working at the Naha government’s disaster prevention and relief risk management division was increased by one person to two people this fiscal year, but the women-only team has not been reorganized after the term for the last one ended in October. An official in charge of the initiative said long-term continuity is a challenge.
The city of Ginowan, which had not stockpiled any of the items listed in the Cabinet Office survey as necessary for women and infants as of the end of 2022, created a new plan in March 2023 based on the Okinawa Prefectural Government’s stockpiling policy presented in December 2022 and other municipalities’ examples.
The city now has stockpiles of such items as sanitary napkins and infant formula, and an official in charge said preparations are being made to expand the list of items in fiscal 2024.
Female firefighters association chief
Experts point out the reason behind the fact that there are so few women working in the field of disaster prevention and relief is an unconscious bias that men are more fit to respond to emergencies.
Kiyomi Kudaka, 66, chief of Okinawa Firefighters Association, fights back against such a bias, stressing, “Both women and men should be in the same position and demonstrate their abilities in the places that best fit each of them.”
Kudaka, who became the association’s first female leader in 2023, is the only woman among heads of prefectural firefighters associations nationwide.
She is a pioneer, having served as the head of a fire brigade in the city of Okinawa since 2016.
She recalls that when she first joined the brigade 20 or 25 years ago, it was a matter of course for members to tell her that women shouldn’t go to fire sites.
When she participated in a nationwide meeting of firefighters associations, members from other prefectures said to her, “Aren’t there any men in Okinawa?”
“I was so frustrated that I shuddered,” she said.
Struggling through the male-dominated society of firefighting, Kudaka had experiences of biting her lip in frustration, but now her on-site activities are recognized by people around her and she is being invited by other prefectures to give lectures as the nation’s sole female firefighters association head.
In an effort to raise communities’ firefighting and disaster preparedness, she works to increase the declining awareness toward fire brigades and encourage more people to become members. At the same time, she is concerned over the fact that there are few women in local governments’ disaster prevention and relief divisions.
“There are things that women can convey from their standpoint," she said, emphasizing the need to increase the number of women in such divisions.
"Women can come forward more and more if conditions are met to support them, such as by sharing child care duties. It is also necessary for women themselves to change their way of thinking. We also must change."
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