Abstract

This study proposes to contribute to the discussions on gender and disaster, based on a thought on intersectional living that would allow rereading the processes of emergency and reconstruction, identifying how disasters affect the experiences of the affected people in a differentiated and unequal way. Based on ethnographic work, focus groups and interviews, the situated experience of three women who led their communities after the 2010 earthquake and tsunami in Chile, from the territories of Llico, Arauco and Constitucion, is analyzed. The intersectional analysis shows that three levels of inhabited space are identified in the stories, which are not only appropriated and lived by women, but also managed and used as a resource for organization and exercise of power: the home, the neighborhood or immediate surroundings and the city or locality. Second, the gendered division of labor forces women to assume double roles in order to rebuild their productive and reproductive spheres. Finally, forms of exercising power and social organization are evidenced, in which, faced with inequality of power, women counteract said asymmetry with networking to respond to the needs of their communities.