Girls Don’t Get to Evacuate First

This piece was written for CGSP’s Opinion Piece Project and published by the National Observer. Full text republished here with permission.

When the wildfire sirens blared through Alberta last summer, 17-year-old Maya packed her little brother’s inhaler and her grandma’s slippers and waited. Not because she didn’t want to leave, but because she couldn’t. In her remote Indigenous community, evacuation support was limited. 

With neither car nor bus in sight and a family depending on her, Maya’s evacuation timeline was much slower than everyone else’s. By the time she found a ride, the smoke had already thickened. Thankfully, Maya and her family made it out safely — but many families in similar situations aren’t as fortunate. 

As climate change accelerates, Canada is facing more frequent and severe disasters. From wildfires in the West to floods in the Maritimes, each disaster exposes the gaps in our evacuation systems and the people they leave at risk. 

As a public health master’s student studying inequities in health and safety, I’ve seen how climate emergencies amplify existing vulnerabilities. Maya’s story is just one example of a reality faced by many women and marginalized people, particularly those living in remote or Indigenous communities. 

When a natural disaster forces a community to evacuate, the official message sounds simple: get out fast. But evacuation isn’t equal for everyone. Behind the headlines and aerial shots of burning forests or devastating earthquakes, there are quiet, dangerous inequalities that determine who makes it out first and who may not make it out at all. 

Evacuation is shaped by layers of inequality that too often go unseen. Women and girls, those who are Indigenous, racialized, migrants, low-income, or living with disabilities, will face systemic barriers that delay or prevent their escape. These barriers are built into the way our emergency systems are designed. 

Global evidence shows that women and children are 14 times more likely to die in natural disasters than men.And when they do survive, they face increased vulnerability to gender-based violence in displacement settings. In Canada, we have seen evacuation orders issued with no accounting for those who are caring for elders or young children, those without cars, or those whose safety is most at risk in crowded emergency shelters. 

Evacuation is shaped by layers of inequality that often go unseen. Women and girls and those who are racialized, migrants, low-income, or living with disabilities, will face systemic barriers that delay or prevent their escape.

Evacuation plans are typically designed as if everyone has the same mobility, resources, and freedoms. But that “gender-neutral” approach yields results that are not neutral at all. A single mother may have to gather her children and elderly parents before she can even think of leaving. A young newcomer may not have access to a vehicle. An Indigenous woman may hesitate to leave home without clarity about whether she’ll be welcomed safely at the nearest evacuation centre. All these delays are systematic failures of systems that never considered them in the first place.

When evacuation orders come with little warning, families are evacuated in a hurry. But in this process, women are disproportionately bearing the caregiver role. They are the ones who are grabbing documents, packing children’s things, securing medication and making sure elders and pets are safe — and when evacuation routes are limited and transportation is scarce, these roles slow down their own ability to evacuate. Women without private transportation or with financial constraints face further delays, and these systemic inequalities compound the risk to their safety. 

And when (or if) they do reach safety, the dangers often don’t end. Research after climate disasters has consistently found spikes in gender-based violence in temporary shelters. Poorly lit facilities, lack of privacy, and absence of gender-sensitive planning create dangerous conditions for women, girls, and gender-diverse young people. This is magnified for marginalized groups, such as Indigenous women, who already face disproportionate rates of violence in Canada. 

What would a feminist evacuation plan look like? It would start with the recognition that disasters affect people differently, and planning must reflect that. Governments and agencies could provide safe and accessible transportation that accounts for people with caregiving responsibilities, mobility challenges, and those without private vehicles.They could ensure gender-sensitive shelter design, with privacy and safety measures built in from the start. They could collect and use sex- and gender-disaggregated data to understand who is being left behind, and hold themselves accountable. 

Indigenous communities have been raising these issues for years. They’ve pointed out that evacuation plans imposed from the outside often ignore local knowledge, culture, and gender dynamics. A truly fair climate response must be feminist and designed with Indigenous input. 

If our evacuation systems remain gender-blind, they will continue to fail the people who are most at risk. Feminist-informed disaster planning is a matter of life and death. The next time an evacuation order comes through, we need to make sure women and girls aren’t an afterthought. We need systems that see them, plan for them, and protect them. We need systems that reflect that safe disaster evacuation shouldn’t be a privilege, it should be a right. 

Jenna Edwards is a public health graduate student at the University of Toronto, studying global health and women’s health with a focus on health inequities.