Gender-Differentiated Impacts of Extreme Events at Selected Households in Coastal Areas, Philippines

Abstract

Nowadays, the unpredictable circumstances which include the occurrence of natural disasters which can be categorized as extreme events in human life is significant for everybody to address since it poses great danger to all regardless of life status, age bracket and gender. The focus of the study is to determine the most recent and extreme hazard that affected the selected coastal areas and its impacts on asset/income, leisure time, and intra-household health. Three hundred household respondents were selected from the three study sites facing West Philippine Sea that were classified as vulnerable to coastal hazards. Said respondents were identified through stratified random sampling and structured household survey questionnaires for men and women were administered. Results revealed that typhoon was the most recent and extreme event that affected the sites wherein both typhoon and flooding brought the highest mean value level of damages to assets and income for men over women. After extreme events, men prioritize cleaning the surroundings while women spent higher number of hours on household activities over other identified activities. Further, it was recorded that men have lesser sleep time after such hazard. Intra-household health impacts include “dengue” and waterborne-diseases wherein higher expenses was computed in treating dengue patients, however; higher time spent for child-care who suffered from waterborne-diseases was observed.