Women’s empowerment following disaster: a longitudinal study of social change

By studying the changes in gender relations in a fishing village affected by the 2010 Chile earthquake and tsunami, this article presents the results of a longitudinal investigation of how vulnerability and resilience is manifested through all stages of the disaster, aspects that have scarcely been studied from a gender perspective. It provides insight into the changes that disasters stimulate in the long-term and how resilience can contribute to reducing women’s vulnerability, becoming the pathway for transformative empowerment. This paper addresses these issues by first introducing the theoretical considerations and then explains the data collection methods and analysis.