Gender, Floods and Informal Volunteering

Disasters are gendered events that greatly exacerbate pre-existing inequalities for women. However, formal volunteer emergency management systems currently in place to help women in affected communities are heavily male-dominated and in steady decline. Research suggests that informal voluntary practices led by women contribute to sustained and more inclusive recovery periods, but these networks have been under researched in the Australian context despite learning opportunities for the formal voluntary sector. To address this gap, this study explores the gender dynamics of voluntary practices that occurred after the 2022 Regional Disaster in Lismore, New South Wales. Ethnographic and semi-structured qualitative methods were used to investigate the gendered experience of volunteering for disaster recovery. Gender structure theory (Risman 2004) is employed to articulate the relationship between individual perceptions of gender in helping; gendered responses to informal volunteering; and the gendered outcomes in helping behaviours during and after the flooding event. Preliminary findings suggest that essentialist understandings of masculinity and femininity burdened women with the responsibility of sustaining community life and placed queer networks at the periphery of mainstream recovery responses. More gendered analyses of voluntary work in disaster recovery are needed to contribute to more equitable recovery services and to redress the gender-neutral approach to emergency management in Australia.