Relocated Housing Schemes and Women's Vulnerability: A Sociological Study of Tsunami Relocated Housing Schemes in Eastern Sri Lanka

Abstract

This study undertakes to critically investigate the issues of relocated women by considering five indicators such as land, livelihood, social infrastructure, security, and community organization. The main objective of the study is to analyze how the anomalies of relocated housing schemes exacerbate the vulnerability in such social environments. The specific objectives of study are to characterize women's roles in participatory recovery efforts, to show the nature of community organizing patterns in relocated communities, and to assess the suitability of methods to women's socioeconomic empowerment in relocated places. The empirical data collection was limited to selected Tsunami-affected relocated areas in the Trincomalee, Batticaloa, and Ampara districts of Sri Lanka, and the qualitative data was primarily collected through personal and group interviews, and study of the case histories of the relocated women. The study could observe that, women's voices were mainly ignored in recovery initiatives, and women in relocated areas were unable to communicate their special interests in the design of reconstruction and rehabilitation programs. In the emerging homogenous and heterogeneous social fabrics, asymmetric power relations have developed among all types of stratified categories of individuals, effectively marginalizing women; furthermore, the displacement resulted in the loss of impacted people's conventional sources of income, and their new environs made it difficult for them to adapt new livelihoods. The study finds that as a result of this predicament, women became more reliant on their male household members, who appeared to be the only possible breadwinners in such anomalous social contexts, and concludes that, women became increasingly vulnerable to violence as a result of weak community organizing, laxity in social control, and fissure in solidarity. The study emphasizes the need for post-disaster participatory development initiatives in relocated settlements to adapt their approaches.