Read about the inspiring women at Rescue Global working in disaster response worldwide

 March 08, 2016

March 8th marks International Women’s Day (IWD), a day dedicated to celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women across the world. The international celebration commends the progress that societies have made in working towards gender parity, but also highlights the fact that this advancement has slowed in many areas, and that therefore, we must act to accelerate global gender equality.

Within the humanitarian sector we need to directly address inequality, collaborating across all sectors to integrate gender parity and build capabilities for women at all levels. Women have a crucial role throughout every aspect of the disaster cycle, yet are often overlooked as contributing members of society in critical decision making.

Later this week Rescue Global will be publishing an article on the role of women in Disaster Risk Reduction and Response (DDR&R) on our news page, and hear from some of our Crisis and Disaster Alliance (CaDRA) partners.

Today, as the world honours IWD, we hear from some of our female team members about what inspires them to work in this sector, what IWD means to them, and also what it means to DRR&R. We also hear from our CEO, about what equality means in practice at Rescue Global. 

David Jones, CEO

“One of the core business drivers of Rescue Global is Excellence. One of our stated values is Equality. For me, International Women’s Day is a wonderful opportunity to remind, and be reminded of, why we chose that driver and that value to be included in a short list of what is, for us, the essence of our organisation. We chose them because we want to be the best we can be, in order to save life. We believe that means we must recruit, empower and work with talented individuals who are awesome when working solo on tasks, and equally so when as a dynamic team under intense pressure. We note that it is relatively easy to stand by, promote and champion drivers and values which are easy, popular and accessible to most. That’s not really a challenge and that doesn’t drive positive change. It is not so easy to promote and champion drivers and values though when the world we live in is in many ways not aligned with the standards we choose to be judged by, and work to. 

Womens’ rights in the workplace in general, in some trades in particular, and the world at large, are far from what I believe they should be. Of course, we can recognise that they are also much better than they were in many regards. So that is a cause for some celebration, as well as reflection. It isn’t enough though. At Rescue Global, we aim to do more. 

For me, a beautiful moment occurred a few weeks ago when delivering some training to a leading academic group, in preparation for an exercise which they would take part in with us in a few weeks. A woman in the audience, who had just watched our “action” themed intro video, asked “how many women there are in Rescue Global ?” Given the (understandable) way she asked, I’m confident that she expected the answer to be somewhere in the low numbers in comparison to men. I looked up and asked one of my colleagues to give his view, as I thought it was around 50%. He said, “hmmmm, actually it’s closer to 60%”. To give context I thought I should also add then that the roles performed by those women were not perhaps what one might guess. Those roles include: one of our founders, our head of governance and risk, our head of operational planning and operations, our first ever sponsored PhD candidate, our head of administration, our head of partnerships. And shortly, one of our two operational fixed wing pilots. I hope that this demonstrates that we mean what we say when we say equality and subsequently, excellence. I was then, and am now, immensely proud of the whole team at Rescue Global. 

Richard Branson, a mentor I have had the opportunity to bounce ideas off in the past, said that one of the keys to success was to remain strategic, and to hire people smarter than you are. They make you look good and don’t drag you into the weeds, as they get on with the hard work of actually getting stuff done. Taking that advice, I and my team search for, and empower talent. We genuinely ignore race, gender and many other aspects. It turns out that in our action-based organisation, trying to save the world and challenge existing paradigms, you (we) end up with around 60% (and increasing) women in our team, at the C suite level, also HQ planning and field execution activities and throughout the organisation. Onwards and upwards.”

Becky Jones

Becky is a co-founder of Rescue Global, and Director of Performance and Risk. She is passionate about the role of good governance within organisations to bring about effective, sustainable and impactful change. Becky believes that this is a crucial area of development for the humanitarian sector in general, which by its very nature works within high risk environments often with vulnerable communities. In addition to advising corporate and government clients on governance and risk management, Becky is responsible for leading the delivery and maintenance of the high standards of internal governance which we set for ourselves in Rescue Global. These include gaining and maintaining the international Quality Management standard ISO 9001, and establishing an organisation wide Enterprise Risk Management system. Prior to working as one of the founders to establish Rescue Global, Becky worked as the Head of Board and Executive Services to a newly established UK non-departmental public body, providing strategic support to the both the Chair and CEO. A key role was assisting with the creation of an organisation wide corporate governance and risk management structure and system.

“International Women’s Day is a celebration of the vital role women play at all levels of society, in both their public and family lives. This year’s focus on gender parity brings sharply to mind the challenges we collectively face in achieving equality, a key indicator of societal health and well-being. In the humanitarian sector we need to seek opportunities to support and enable the crucial role women play at the national, organisation, and individual level in creating resilience and capacity within their society to withstand the shock and trauma of disasters. This is integral to the Rescue Global mission of saving lives through disaster risk reduction and response activities. 

I am proud to work alongside inspiring and dedicated people, both men and women, within the Rescue Global team. Equality is one of our core organisational values, which I believe we embody and champion at every level of our organisation.”

Elizabeth Stileman

Lizzy is the Planning and Operations Officer at Rescue Global. During her 20 years of service as an Officer in the British Army, she led teams of hundreds of people in logistics roles, before becoming an instructor at the world-leading Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. This wealth of experience means that Lizzy is perfectly placed to develop Rescue Global planning and operations procedures by translating proven military logistics into a humanitarian context. To further advance her knowledge of the sector, Lizzy is currently completing an MSc in Hazards and Disaster Management. 

“International Women’s Day will highlight the disparity between the sexes and enable women across the globe to have the same opportunities as men.

Women can be seen as vulnerable, but this is not always the case. Women play a fundamental role prior to, during and after a disaster and it is their resilience and ability to recuperate which is essential to enable a community to recover. It is fundamental that women are involved from the inception of DRR&R planning and International Women’s Day will highlight the importance of women in this role.”

Rebekah Yore

Rebekah is a PhD student at University College London (UCL) and Academic Research Associate at Rescue Global. She moved into the humanitarian sector from a background in development research, having previously worked with poverty alleviation and community reintegration programme evaluations in rural sub-Saharan Africa, and on microfinance programme appraisal in urban and rural India. Rebekah’s diverse experience in both humanitarian and academic sectors is invaluable to Rescue Global, not only in undertaking vital field research, but also in bridging the gap between practitioners and academia.

“International Women’s Day is a celebration for us all. It is simply a chance to honour the woman in all her many forms; let’s focus on gender equality, but let’s look at her in her own right, without always making gender-related comparisons, and recognise her as a multifaceted super being! From historical heroines to contemporary leaders and to future world changers, women have contributed greatly to societies across the world, often without due recognition. But as with every fight for a more just world, it’s important that we, as men and women, look beyond the slogans advocating for gender parity and back up these sentiments with our thoughts, attitudes and behaviour. 

Today we are celebrating the economic, political and social achievements of women throughout history, honouring our unsung female paragons of fortitude and achievement; but this emphasis on the women of our world must be sustained beyond International Women’s Day and become a part of our every day existence.

Women contribute 70% of the world’s working hours, yet they earn only 10% of the world’s income. Women make up half of the world’s population and yet they represent a staggering 70% of the world’s poor. How we treat our women around the world is a measure of the health of our societies and an indicator of our global well being. In the development field, they say that if you make resources available to a woman, her entire family benefits, physically, academically, economically and socially. If low income, marginalised populations are more vulnerable to crises and disasters, low income, marginalised women incur the greatest levels of suffering. Yet women are a vast, untapped, talented and inspired resource. Access to simplified mainstream services such as credit, insurance and markets can transform a woman’s small, informal enterprise into a formal business with scale potential. Access to education and land rights can enable a woman to own property and bestow improved prospects on her children, breaking poverty cycles. Elevating women into positions of leadership and influence can make women’s voices louder, more prevalent and better represented at every level. The stronger the role of women, the more resilient to shock, disaster and crisis they may become. This is entirely achievable, and the humanitarian sector must prioritise women’s rights in the formation of the new global agenda.”

Hannah Pathak

Hannah is Head of Partnerships at Rescue Global. She has over 15 years’ experience managing international partnerships in both the corporate and NGO sectors. Over the last decade, Hannah’s focus has been on NGO-corporate partnerships, including leading high profile partnerships such as the HSBC Climate Partnership and the HSBC Water Programme at Earthwatch – both programmes being the world’s largest corporate/NGO joint initiatives in the sustainability sector.

Hannah has set up and directed sustainability projects in over 15 countries, and local NGO offices in India, Brazil and Hong Kong. In addition, Hannah is experienced in risk and crisis management, in both an organisational and remote field-based context.

At Rescue Global Hannah manages the relationships with the different sectors we collaborate with, as well as fundraising and development efforts, and our brand and marketing outreach.

“In previous years, on International Women’s Day, I have been lucky enough to be invited to the official City of London celebrations at the historic Guildhall buildings. These events celebrate the professional achievements of women in the “Square Mile”, the heart of the financial district in London. Many of the speakers had overcome great personal adversity to reach the top of their fields, becoming leaders, irrespective of gender. These inspiring role models highlighted impressive achievements, but also the dark side of issues that tend to have a gender bias: domestic violence, unequal access to opportunities, or the double obstacle of coming from communities that do not yet support educational or professional advancement of girls and women.

Through my career I have also had the good fortune to travel widely, to remote rural communities. Through this I have met an incredible array of inspirational women: farmers in southern India practicing innovative multi-level cropping to boost their yields and incomes, a lone doctor who works a relentless seven-day week in a rural hospital in Brazil, a mayor celebrating her unprecedented third term of election in rural central Philippines, the women of the 505th Search and Rescue Group of the Philippines Airforce.

Nonetheless, through the majority of my work travels, women have been much less visible than men, with lives lived less in the public domain. Working now in disaster risk reduction and response, I see that this can be problematic when it comes to ensuring women’s voices are heard, needs acknowledged, and that the roles they play in withstanding the impacts of disasters are understood and valued.

At Rescue Global I work with some amazing and inspiring people – women and men – and equality is at the heart of our organisational values. We embody these values in our work – supporting nations, organisations and individuals to build resilience. Through our work we are constantly, and rightly, reminded that people affected by disasters are individuals, not statistics, such as the story of this woman, following Hurricane Patricia in Mexico in November 2015.

Rescue Global staff with CaDRA partners, the Philippines 505th Search and Rescue Group

The 2016 International Women’s Day theme is Pledge for Parity. Individuals and groups are encouraged to pledge to facilitate gender equality within their spheres of influence.

Our Rescue Global values align with this theme: we aim to empower, support diversity, and to act with integrity. Specific to gender, we will continue champion the empowerment of women in DRR&R, as well as continuing to promote gender balanced leadership and professional and personal development of women within the organisation.

Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5 “Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls” sets a number of key targets that must be accomplished in order to reach parity. The pledges that have already been made for IWD demonstrate commitment from a variety of important actors to work towards these targets. This goal is particularly instrumental to the sustainable development of humanity and cannot be overlooked, which is why International Women’s Day acts as such an important reminder of what has been achieved and what we still need to achieve - as written under SDG5, “gender equality is not only a fundamental human right, but a necessary foundation for a peaceful, prosperous and sustainable world”.

IWD Toolkit
IWD Light Up
Where Women Work

Join the IWD Community