The Matter of Access to Capitals: A Case Study of Gender-Differentiated Vulnerability to Flooding in Laos PDR

This thesis analyzes gender-differentiated vulnerability to the flooding in 2011 within a rural community in Laos PDR - the village of Ban Lao situated in the Mekong River basin. The study employs the Community Capitals Framework (CCF) to explore what resources women and men in the case study had lost in the flooding to thereafter be able to analyze what capitals where most essential for their coping and adaptation capacity. A gender perspective is further applied to reveal the differences between women and men in terms of access to the seven capitals in the framework and how it is essential for gender-differentiated vulnerability to flooding. The case study illustrates that the women and men responded and used different coping and adaptation strategies before, during and after the flooding of the village. Most common were short term coping such as selling animals and rescue belongings. Long term sustainable strategies labeled adaptation were income diversification, a strategy the prerogative of male household heads. Gendered differentiations in access capitals do not only restrain the options for livelihood diversification but also determine the choice of which strategy to approach to be able to reduce the impacts from flooding. Thereby can reductions of vulnerability to future flooding on local level only be achieved by a fuller understanding of the interaction of the seven capitals and how they influence the capacity and choice of coping and adaptation strategy. Keywords: vulnerability, flooding, gender, access to capitals, Community Capitals Framework, Laos PDR