The precarious situation faced by women and girls in the wake of climate-related disasters is illustrated through fieldwork conducted in Eastern Visayas in the Philippines, one of the regions most affected by Super Typhoon Haiyan in 2013. However, this article illustrates that these heightened levels of gendered violence faced by women and girls are not a result of the disaster alone; rather, they are rooted in the inequalities inherent in the social construction of gender prior to the catastrophe, which then become sharpened as efforts to survive become more urgent.
Keywords: natural disasters; violence against women and girls; vulnerabilities.