Fostering New Ways of Working: New Skills for Practitioners

1. Fostering New Ways of Working: New Skills for Practitioners Session 31

2. Session Objectives • Identify the knowledge, skills, and abilities emergency managers need to implement a vulnerability perspective • Consider the implications of professionalization for adoption of the vulnerability approach • Review issues arising for nontraditional emergency managers such as women • Review and assess strategies for increasing diversity in emergency management

3. Call for Practitioners Who are Able To: • Use a global systems perspective • Understand hazards and disasters as human choices • Anticipate ambiguity, constant change, and surprise • Reject short-term thinking • Take a broader view of social forces and their role in hazards and disasters • Embrace the principles of sustainable development Mileti, Dennis . 1999. Disasters by Design.

4. Guiding Principles for “Managing a Reduction of Vulnerability • Tap into collective memory and local knowledge • Forward-thinking approach • Understanding of action research • Relate disasters to other environmental movements • Network bureaucracies • Commitment to grassroots organizing • Knowledge of local community structures • Network with change-oriented grassroots groups • Commitment to working with “citizen activists” • Appreciation for people’s struggle for basic human rights • Sensitivity to the limits and capacities of governments • Acceptance of accountability to vulnerable people Blaikie et al. 1998. At Risk.

5. Be more gender-aware and guided by gender equity goals Use gender analysis Identify gender bias Advocate for gender equity Work collectively and as equals with women Work with leading women’s groups Develop more race- conscious practices Communicate across language barriers Utilize culturally-appropriate media Communicate with community leaders, advocacy groups, and faith-based organizations Follow culturally-sensitive guidelines Work collectively with ethnic CBOS Sensitivities Needed by Emergency Managers Working from a Vulnerability Perspective • Recognize and critique class bias • Advocate for low-income groups • Learn about living conditions of poor people • Identify economic differences between neighborhoods and communities • Sensitivity to class-biased assumptions • Sensitivity to potential class-based barriers

6. Indicators of Increasing Professionalization Expanding degree and certification programs FEMA’s Higher Education Project http://www.fema.gov/emi/edu Growth of professional associations, journals, and conferences Workshops and conferences

7. Indicators of Male-Dominance in Emergency Management Workplaces • Less than 5% women in operational emergency service officers in Australian Institute of Emergency Services membership • In 1990, only 2 of 22 Caribbean countries had women national directors in emergency management agencies • In 1985, only 20% female enrollment in Institute of Emergency Administration and Planning at UNT, which increased to 40% in 1998

8. Structural Barriers to Women in Emergency Management Jobs • Under-representation in disciplines from which emergency managers are traditionally drawn • Limited access to non-academic routes into the profession • Gender segregation and stratification in work organizations which limit women’s advancement • Family-related conflicts related to caregiving, sole parenting, and domestic labor • Women’s status as contingent workers • Cultural barriers, especially to working-class women and women from marginalized social groups

9. Workplace Barriers to Women in Emergency Management Jobs • Lack of mentoring • Exclusion from influential but informal networks • Co-worker resistance or hostility • Male-oriented reward systems • Avoidance of an “aggressively masculine environment”

10. Strategies for Increasing Diversity • Expanded professional association activities • Educational presentations and other forms of outreach • Development of educational materials • Mentoring programs and paid internships • Multi-disciplinary working groups • Curriculum development in historically black, Hispanic, and/or tribal colleges • Curriculum integration of vulnerability into related fields