A study by McNaugh and Inwood from University of Sydney’s University Centre for Rural Health (UCRH) agrues that, based on their research, as climate-related disasters become more frequent and severe, Australia must rethink who it sees as leaders in disaster response and recovery. The Northern Rivers experience offers valuable lessons for other regions across NSW and the country, they say.
‘We need to build disaster systems that recognise and support the leadership that already exists in communities – especially the leadership of women,’ said Dr McNaught.
They say government should fund ‘grassroots initiatives, including women in planning and governance, and valuing their work as essential to recovery’, and ‘embed gender-inclusive, community-led approaches into disaster planning and recovery frameworks’. They also urge ‘further research into supporting the health and well-being of women organisers, whose contributions are vital but often come at a personal cost’.
Sahba Delshad said when the floods hit Lismore in 2022 it was like being in a war zone.
‘I never thought I would experience this in Australia,’ she told The Echo.
Sahba was assisting people evacuated to Gonnellabah Gym and said the way people came together ‘was incredible’.
‘There was a room with all the clothes, a room with toiletries, they even had osteos, acupuncturists, and masseuses that were coming and they were women, there to provide those free services. What I witnessed, the community spirit, was incredible. And it was women, I don’t remember seeing many men.’
Mel Bloor from Resilient Uki is one of the women who stepped up following the 2022 floods and has been coordinating a range of projects.
‘I’ve been working voluntarily for three years now, we’ve got an organisation, and we’ve got projects that are underway, that are long-term projects that I’m overseeing . There’s just an expectation that because you’ve stepped into that role, you’ll just kind of continue it, but there’s not actually any prospect of getting paid for it.
‘I would like to get back into the workforce but now I’m volunteering as a community leader, it’s really hard for me to just abandon that and go and get paid work now. Where is that going to leave my community?’
It is this expectation that women will just continue to work for free to support and enhance their communities that the study by McNaugh and Inwood highlights.
Undervaluing women
‘The research confirms a systemic issue in disaster governance: the persistent undervaluing of women’s contributions. Despite their central role in community recovery, women community organisers were often excluded from formal decision-making processes and left to navigate bureaucratic systems alone,’ they say in their report.
‘When it comes to community resilience, at the moment it’s kind of agency or structure centric, rather than community centric,’ said Bec Talbot at Mullumbimby Resilience Team.
‘Right now community needs to be recognised – not just as the ass end of some kind of government structure – community needs to be recognised as where it starts and where it stops.’
‘At the conferences that Mel and I go to, we know that shared responsibility and community-led action is really important as part of the community resilience projects, but there’s not shared power. With power I mean a seat at the decision-making table. They love to ask us questions and put it in a report, but they don’t often ask how we think the community would best be able to benefit from x, y, z?’
Mel agrees, saying that it is a systems problem, ‘it’s not collaborative,’ she says.
Co-author of the study Loriana Bethune from Gender and Disaster Australia points out, ‘This is not just a Northern Rivers issue – it’s a national one.’
‘Across Australia, we see the same pattern: women step up in times of crisis, but their leadership is unpaid, unsupported, and unacknowledged. This research is a call to action to change that.
‘This research shows that if we want resilient communities, we need to start by recognising and resourcing the people already doing the work – and that means local women.’
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