A future with few women post-tsunami

A future with few women post-tsunami

Bhimanto Suwastoyo, Agence France-Presse/Banda Aceh

Tarmizi Mohammad has plenty to worry about as he helps tsunami survivors in a village in devastated Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam, but as the emergency subsides, one thing is preying more on his mind -- the absence of women.

"Look at us here, we are all men and mostly under 30," said Mohammad, who runs a survivor coordination post in Cot Lamkuweuh, a small community on the coastal outskirts of Banda Aceh.

Around him, a dozen men gather at the post, mending fish nets and chatting, oblivious to Mohammad's concerns.

"That is one thing you will easily find all over this area -- tsunami widowers or bachelors, or sometimes, widowers claiming to be bachelors," he said, momentarily exchanging his somber look for a brief smile.

Firmansyah, a man in his early 30s, is a typical case.

"I have lost my wife and three children," he said, adding that three women now cooked for some 50 men and children living in tents in the village. "Nobody brings me my coffee in the morning and no one cooks my favorite dishes."

Among the 260 survivors in Cot Lamkuweuh, which once boasted a population of 1,350, there were only 87 females, including children -- a picture repeated all along's Aceh's devastated coastline, and in other areas.

Three months after the December 26 disaster killed 273,000 people around the Indian Ocean, a pattern of disproportionately high female mortality is emerging that could heap further problems on communities already struggling to recover.

In a study released last week, British-based charity Oxfam said four times more women than men died in some tsunami-affected areas, including Aceh, Southeast India and parts of Sri Lanka.

The report said the imbalance was because many men were working inland or fishing offshore when the waves hit on a Sunday morning, while the women were at home. Men were also more capable of climbing trees or swimming, it said.

"In some villages it now appears that up to 80 percent of those killed were women," said Andrew Hewett, executive director of Oxfam in Australia.

"The impact on the gender balance within the community seems to be so severe that the consequences are going to ripple right through the whole society for many years to come."

In Aceh, the situation at Mohammad's village is repeated in settlements all along the coast.

"Less than a third of our 1,272 survivors are women," said Faisal, the head of Punge Jurong, some three kilometers from Lamkuweuh.

Further down the coast in Lamlumpu, there were only 17 women left of the 1,700 that had inhabited the village before the tsunami destroyed it, said Musafir, of the Build Aceh Forum, a non-governmental group working there.

"You encounter this condition in almost all displaced communities," he said.

Nazamuddin, an economist from Aceh's state-run Syah Kuala university, said the situation was likely to have a far-reaching effect on the province as it rebuilds since women previously played an important role in the local economy.

Except for the tilling of soil, all work in rice fields is traditionally done by women in agricultural communities, while in the fishery sector, women dominated the processing stage after fishermen had landed their catch.

A 2004 report of the UN Development Programme showed that the percentage of women overall in employment was at 49 percent in Aceh -- considerably higher than the 26.6 percent in Jakarta.

For women in senior official, managerial and technical positions, the figure was again high -- 45 percent compared to 35 percent in Jakarta.

Syah Kuala university sociologist Ahmad Humam Hamid said the repercussions of the gender imbalance were difficult to gauge but it was now an imperative to factor in the needs of women in programs aimed at assisting survivors.

He said surviving women also faced the increased burden of looking after widowed men in their extended families and communities, although this was a problem before the disaster due to deaths in fighting in a separatist conflict in the region.

"The tsunami was a second blow to Acehnese women. Many had already taken on the burden of raising their family on their own because of the long-dragging conflict here, because their men died or had to leave," Hamid said.

"Now, a decreasing number of women have to bear the expanded responsibility of also taking care of the men and children in their neighborhood. Their voice should be heard when planning for the recovery," he said.

Faridah, a housewife in her 20s who is among the newly burdened women, is stoic about here new chores of preparing meals for 35 men sheltering in tents at a mosque that is the only standing structure in the village of Ulee Lheue.

"We are used to this, and besides, they are now like family to me," she said.