TRANSCRIPT
In northern New South Wales, it’s been years of disaster for Jillian-Knight Smith.
She's endured floods and fires, now ex-tropical Cyclone Alfred.
She says the community still hasn’t recovered.
"It's very traumatic, everybody is traumatised. It really did look like a bomb had gone off in that there was just rubbish piled up on the street. Every object that you look at you imagine, what would that object be like if it were wet? So, you know, you have a really different attitude to everything in your environment."
As CEO of Women Up North Housing, she helped to provide refuge and support to more than 900 women and children who experienced domestic and family violence last year.
Ms Knight-Smith says while the worst of the Cyclone Alfred may have passed, the true extent of trauma is yet to be uncovered.
"The research shows that women are very much experiencing domestic and family violence after disasters and during. It’s the people that we don’t know that are in domestic and family violence, that haven’t had a response. Because our community is our first responder, services are really the last responders."
Jodie jokingly refers to herself as the Queen of Displacement.
She has lived through floods, lost her family home to bushfire and years later, experienced the Black Saturday fires in Victoria.
During the summer of 2009 her property was destroyed.
Her house, the only one left standing on the street.
Jodie also experienced family violence during this time.
"After a disaster, women lose their support networks that are around them. They are usually the natural nurturers, the caregivers of the family. Which women I think just naturally care for everyone else and put their own needs second which definitely has a detrimental effect on their physical and mental health."
Jodie organised a respite retreat for women impacted by the fires.
What started out as conversations between women planning a camping weekend to have some peace and quiet turned into over 750 women across Victoria gathering to support one another.
Jodie was also part of a landmark study by Gender & Disaster Australia which spoke to women impacted by the disaster.
It found more than half experienced abuse for the first time following the fires.
"Women in disasters too just unconsciously, we have a view that we allow the men to lead the way, which can sort of put us in other precarious positions. Through my experience, because it was a whole community impact, you know our local services were impacted as well, the people you would reach out to for protection and support were struggling as well. Situations were not handled appropriately."
In New Zealand, authorities reported a 53 per cent rise in domestic violence against women after the Christchurch earthquake; and in the United States, one study by the University of Mississippi found a 98 per cent increase following Hurricane Katrina.
Ms Knight-Smith says evacuation centres, which are supposed to be safe havens during times of uncertainty can also pose a risk.
"Evacuation centres are very stressful places where there’s minimal resources being spread across a large amount of people and in fact also people might come in contact with somebody who is the perpetrator of domestic and family violence in their life, and they might have separated but they end up in the same evacuation centre."
Laura Downey, Program Lead for Universal Health Coverage at The George Institute for Global Health believes it’s part of a broader trend where women are disproportionately impacted by the climate.
She says it’s not just social inequality.
Natural disasters are impacting women’s health security too.
"Climate change is an amplifier of existing social, economic and health inequities. It is widely known now that exposure to extreme heat causes drastic rises in preterm birth, in still birth and miscarriage. However, you pass any pregnant woman on the street and most of them are likely not to know about this."
According to the United Nations Development Programme, women and girls are 14 per cent more likely to die in a climate emergency and make up 80 per cent of people displaced.
Save the Children, an organisation which advocates for young people’s health worldwide has called this the "double blow of climate change".
Around two-thirds of all child marriages occur in regions with higher-than average climate risks.
These young girls are among the fastest growing groups in the world.
In early adulthood right through to menopause, the climate is an issue across the life course of women.
Research by the National Institutes of Health has found women who work in warmer environments are more likely to experience kidney, cardiovascular and lung disease.
"In older ages, we also know that women are more likely to die as a consequence of exposure to these environmental issues. In the European heatwaves of 2022, we saw the often-reported figure of 60,000 people dying during those heatwaves. What was less reported was that actually, 66% of those deaths were in women."
Currently, Australia’s National Climate Resilience and Adaption Strategy, which outlines the government’s position on climate change, makes no reference to women.
The recent global climate conference, COP29, initially had no women on its organising committee.
Of the 78 Heads of State who attended the summit, only eight were women.
Angelina Inthavong is a 21-year-old gender and health equity activist.
She says her background as a queer woman of colour from a low socioeconomic household has informed her advocacy work.
But Ms Inthavong still doesn’t see enough intersectional women like her involved in the decision-making process.
"Historically, women of colour, women from regional and rural areas, First Nations women, queer women, women with a disability are often left out of these decision-making spaces. It really all matters to have that lived experience at the table. I think there needs to be a real shift from consulting these communities from focusing on creating and co-design with them."
The Trump administration recently announced that 83% of programs run by the US Agency for International Development, which provides foreign aid, have been eliminated under new cost-saving measures.
In January, the US also announced its withdrawal from the World Health Organisation and plans to suspend funding.
Ms Inthavong says this recent shift in foreign investment may present an opportunity for Australia.
"My only hope as a young person is that many other countries step up to the table. I think Australia has a real opportunity at the moment to shape the future of what climate responsibility looks like. We can be a leader in this space."
Laura Downey from The George Institute echoes her sentiment.
"Global health means health for all and we will not be a healthy Australia if our neighbours are not healthy too."
Back in Lismore, Jillian Knight-Smith says she is feeling optimistic, despite the disaster clean-up and destruction that awaits her.
"This beautiful woman I know who’s done some fundraisers for our service rung me up and said, 'I'm going to cook a whole heap of chicken curry and get it out to people’. Because when these disasters happen the shops are empty, and people can end up not having enough food. So, disaster is a time where we really celebrate how people are kind and generous. It's a very special time. It's a unique time."
