The forgotten casualties redux: Women, children, and disaster risk

- Re-examines 1995 article on environmental burdens on women and children.
- Income inequality, population movements, and gendered violence increase adverse impacts.
- Food security, water scarcity, and toxic air disproportionately affect children.
- Gender and age differences in disaster mortality.
- Measurement lacking for assessing differential burdens on women and children.

Twenty years ago this journal published an article examining the disproportionate burden of global environmental changes on women and children, highlighting the inequalities in capabilities and opportunities for coping with risks. This retrospective re-examines selected global social and environmental transformations that have increased gendered vulnerability illustrating that over the past two decades, inequalities persist and in some instances have worsened. The social transformations underway-especially widening wealth gaps, large-scale population movements, gendered violence-exacerbate the environmental burdens on women and children even more. Changes in food security, water availability, and air quality continue to produce adverse effects on women and children reducing their ability to cope with everyday risk let alone respond and recover from disasters. Women and children continue to bear the brunt of adverse impacts of disasters and environmental change however we don't know the magnitude or geographic extent of the burden because there is no legacy of data reliability to consistently document these injustices. What gets measured gets done, but in the case of women and children they are often the undocumented victims further reproducing the notion of the forgotten casualties.