Never forget and still to be engaged

10 years after the unforgettable disaster in Japan

In 2012, we published a book titled "3.11 We Women Dashed Round" in Japanese as a memoir of women who dashed round to support and reconstruct the area and people after the Great East Japan Earthquake (March 11, 2011), one year after its experience with a huge question of "Why the committee for the disaster relief, prevention and reconstruction are constituted only by men when half of the victims and their supporters of such a devastating mega earthquake being women?". We wrote an extracted English version and appealed to the government to promote legislation and to be an active proposer of the issues during UN-CSW58 in March 2014.
We, BPW-Japan, organized the side event during UN-CSW 58 in New York on "Disaster Risk Reduction and Empowerment of Women" and Government of Japan submitted the resolution “Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women in Natural Disasters" which was supported by 79 countries." In May, the same year, at IFBPW Jeju Congress in Korea, we submitted the English booklet with our suggested resolution “Gender Empowerment to Reduce Damages by Disasters" that was accepted in the Congress (2014 E-4).
At the 10th anniversary of the Great East Japan Earthquake this year, we would like to update the English version on our website, as follows;

extracted ENG version [PDF 1.5MB ]

After the Great East Japan Earthquake, BPW Japan had launched the Women's Job Creation by Women Project" with the slogan of The Road to Reconstruction Starting with Women. We selected some women’s businesses or NGOs which would lead to the employment promotion of women in the future for five years (2013-2017). The funds were based on the donations from domestic and overseas’ BPW members.

(1) BPW Japan booth at Helsinki Congress in June, 2011
(2) Japanese members with overseas members at the Congress
(3) Ms. Masako Hiramatsu, the then Chair of International Committee, with Ms. Tuulikki Juusela, the past IFBPW president
(4) BPW Japan members wearing yellow jackets visited the affected area. (June, 2011)