Across most major disasters on record, women and girls have faced disproportionately higher mortality and slower economic recovery than men in the same event.
The gap isn't biological — it's structural. Women are more likely to be primary caregivers, which can delay evacuation; less likely to have been taught to swim in regions where that skill determines survival in floods; and more likely to lose income-generating assets that are harder to rebuild after a disaster strikes.
Effective response design now builds this in from the start: women involved in early-warning committees reach other women faster and more credibly; shelters designed with safety and privacy in mind see higher uptake; and recovery aid that reaches women directly, rather than only household heads, tends to be reinvested more broadly across the family.
None of this is a niche consideration — it changes outcomes at population scale. Disaster planning that treats vulnerability as evenly distributed will consistently under-protect the people actually most at risk, and gender is one of the clearest, most fixable examples of that gap.