Women's hard-won knowledge must be shared and put to good use. There are lots of ways we can do this together. Please send your recommendations for additional resources from countries much like the United States to usgdra@gmail.com-and see the global Gender and Disaster Network for others.

Through film

Still Waiting: Life After Katrina is an excellent account of one extended network of women in the aftermath of the Gulf Storms of 2005.

Trouble the Water profiles a couple coping with Katrina in the context of the everyday disasters in their lives and neighborhood.

Through disaster research

Some of Women's Disaster Stories are compiled from international case studies and highlights the capacities as well as needs of women in disaster. Men are less often heard from on sex and gender in disasters in this body of academic research to date, though women often speak about the men in their lives in disaster research.

Canadian Disaster Stories includes first-person accounts by and about women and men in Canada.

Through blogging and investigative journalism

Katrina’s Jewish Voices captures women’s Katrina experiences in collaboration with the Jewish Women’s Archive and the Center for History and New Media. The virtual archive of stories, images and reflections includes diaries, poetry, quilts and more.

Women’s eNews profiled a number of women caught up in different ways in the 9/11 attacks and the 2005 Gulf Coast storms, highlighting women’s leadership as well as how they coped with a host of direct and indirect effects, including sexual assault and domestic violence.

And always through art

The popular culture of disaster has historically been actively constructed by women working in a wide variety of media including graphic design, song, poetry, video and the fabric arts including disaster quilts.

Consider quilts, traditionally serving women in practical ways to express ideas and feelings, to meet immediate needs, to convey subversive meaning (mapping safe routes for enslaved women and men fleeing the South), to raise funds (AIDS or breast cancer quilts) and to tell stories of everyday life (quilts by and about ranching women, for instance).

Women (joined increasingly by men who quilt) have worked together on numerous disaster quilting projects, as well, quickly producing quilts sent to displaced people for comfort and warmth, and laboring over other disaster quilts to convey feelings, for example about the Exxon Valdez oil spill. In Grand Forks, a quilting club pieced together quilt blocks that told one story at a time, for instance about toilet-training in the aftermath of a major flood or struggles with mental illness.

Enjoy this Katrina quilt from the Jewish Women’s Katrina archive, and read more about its origins.