Men and disaster: Men's experiences of the Black Saturday bushfires and the aftermath

This paper demonstrates the harmful effects that social expectations of masculinity can have on coping mechanisms and decision-making. Expectations based on gender have broad implications for families and communities and for the ways in which emergency management personnel and procedures operate.

The findings conclude that constructed ideals of masculinity, and the resulting pressures and expectations, contribute significantly to community suffering and that acknowledgement of this by the emergency management sector is necessary for improvements in response and recovery.

Australian Journal of Emergency Management, Volume 31, Issue 3, Pages 40-48. This document is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommerical 4.0 International licence.