Key points
- Research has found spikes in domestic violence during droughts, COVID-19 lockdowns, bushfires and floods.
- Researchers have found that women are also more likely to die during natural disasters and become displaced afterwards.
- Experts say climate and environmental policies must address the dangers women face during and after disasters.
This article contains references to domestic violence.
A woman lived in fear when her drunken husband started punching her car and throwing glass bottles at her.
Another recognized her partner’s escalating violence when her young son suddenly said to a stranger, “My dad is really mean to my mom.”
While another woman was driving on a country road, her husband suddenly applied the handbrake during an argument.
It’s been more than a decade since these stories of domestic abuse in the wake of Victoria’s 2009 Black Saturday bushfires were shared in a landmark study showing gender-based violence increases after the disaster.
Research has since revealed dramatic spikes in domestic violence during the millennium drought, during COVID-19 lockdowns and after the 2022 NSW Northern Rivers flood catastrophe.
According to a post-disaster report by peak body Domestic Violence NSW, communications were disrupted during the floods, forcing health workers to phone women using small antennas connected to generators in their cars.
“This is war zone stuff,” one worker said in a submission to a state parliament inquiry.
But despite years of growing evidence, Australian researchers say climate and environmental policies still do not adequately recognize the greater dangers faced by women during and after disasters.
According to an in-depth report by Women’s Environmental Leadership Australia, women are 14 times more likely to die in a natural disaster and account for 80% of people displaced in the aftermath.
“The impacts are not equal at all,” said the organization’s research manager Carla Pascoe Leahy.
“There is social disadvantage, but women are also economically disadvantaged and… when a crisis hits, they have less security and fewer resources to draw on.”
Violence against women often increases during a disaster because traditional gender roles tend to become more deeply entrenched, the report said.
While men generally take on roles considered heroic – such as flood rescue, firefighting, cleanup and reconstruction – women carry a greater burden in relief work.
Emergency worker Steve O’Malley educates first responders on how gender expectations can normalize violence during extreme events.
“The research … found that the perpetrators of the violence were men who had also responded to the disaster, so there was a sense that they should be forgiven,” O’Malley said.
“There is a conflation of the causes of violence – which is power and the choice to be violent – but the community forgave it because of what the men had been through.”
She believes that preventing gender-based violence should be the “core business” of the emergency sector, which is often dominated by men.
Pascoe Leahy, who conducted the research on women’s leadership, said there should be a gender lens in environmental policies to better protect vulnerable groups from the disproportionate effects of disasters.
“We have fabulous research in the Australian context that policymakers can use to begin to respond to this situation,” he said.
“It has to get on their radar.”
If you or someone you know is affected by family and domestic violence, call 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732, text 0458 737 732 or visit . In case of emergency, call 000.
run by No to Violence, can be contacted on 1300 766 491.