Women were left at home by their husbands to care for children and protect property. Women's saris restricted their mobility. Women were malnourished compared to men and physically weaker. During the cyclone, the lack of purdah in public shelters may also have deterred women from seeking refuge. Equipment taken into disaster areas was inadequate to meet the needs of women.
Many women lose breast-feeding infants during environmental disasters.
Pumps to express breast milk are essential to avoid serious infection and debilitating pain. Equipment and medication are also needed to handle the increase in miscarriages which always follows disasters. It has become common in development circles to talk of the 'feminisation of poverty'. The phrase implies that poverty is becoming a female phenomenon, or that women are becoming poorer relative to men. This trend is often linked to an increase in the number of female-headed households, to the informalisation of labour markets and, generally, to the economic crises and adjustments of the 1980s in Latin America and Africa.