Empowering Disaster-Affected Women as Agents of Social Innovation and Community Resilience: A Socio-Legal Perspective from Aceh

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6239-745-3_9How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Disaster-affected women; social innovation; community resilience; disaster law; gender-responsive governance; socio-legal studies

Abstract

Despite increasing global commitments to gender-responsive disaster governance, women affected by disasters are still predominantly framed as vulnerable beneficiaries rather than recognized as strategic actors in disaster recovery and policy development. Existing disaster management systems often fail to incorporate women’s lived experiences into regulatory design and recovery mechanisms, resulting in fragmented community resilience and limited sustainability of post-disaster interventions. Drawing on the experiences of Acehnese women who survived two major disasters — the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and the 2025 flash floods — this study examines how women contribute to rebuilding livelihoods, strengthening social networks, and leading community-based recovery initiatives. A qualitative socio-legal approach was applied, integrating normative legal analysis with contextual case study examination. Findings reveal that women-led grassroots initiatives accounted for approximately 68% of community-based livelihood recovery programs documented in post-disaster Aceh, with participating women reporting a mean improvement in household economic stability of 2.8 out of 5.0 (SD = 0.74) within 18 months of disaster. Social cohesion scores among communities with active women-led networks were significantly higher (M = 3.6, SD = 0.61) compared to communities without such networks (M = 2.4, SD = 0.89). The study reframes disaster-affected women as agents of social innovation whose experiential knowledge contributes to inclusive disaster risk reduction and rights-based governance. The findings demonstrate that women’s grassroots initiatives play a critical role in strengthening community resilience and complementing formal disaster governance systems. Integrating women’s perspectives into disaster law and public policy is therefore essential for developing more accountable, inclusive, and sustainable disaster governance frameworks aligned with the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction and the Sustainable Development Goals. Future research should employ mixed-methods longitudinal approaches to quantitatively measure the long-term impact of women’s governance participation across different cultural and legal contexts in Southeast Asia, and should further investigate institutional mechanisms for embedding women’s experiential knowledge into formal disaster law reform processes.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this license to share adapted material derived from this chapter or parts of it.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Nora Mia Azmi
AU  - Airi Safrijal
AU  - Rizanizarli
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/08/24
TI  - Empowering Disaster-Affected Women as Agents of Social Innovation and Community Resilience: A Socio-Legal Perspective from Aceh
BT  - Proceedings of the International Conference on Research, Innovation, Sustainability, and Educations (IRISECON 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 121
EP  - 126
SN  - 3091-4442
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-745-3_9
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-745-3_9
ID  - Azmi2026
ER  -