Gender study: Female hurricanes not taken seriously
Quote:
People don’t take hurricanes as seriously if they have a feminine name and the consequences are deadly, finds a new groundbreaking study.
Female-named storms have historically killed more because people neither consider them as risky nor take the same precautions, the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concludes.
Researchers at the University of Illinois and Arizona State University examined six decades of hurricane death rates according to gender, spanning 1950 and 2012. Of the 47 most damaging hurricanes, the female-named hurricanes produced an average of 45 deaths compared to 23 deaths in male-named storms, or almost double the number of fatalities. (The study excluded Katrina and Audrey, outlier storms that would skew the model).
To test the hypothesis the gender of the storm names impacts people’s judgments about a storm, the researchers set up 6 experiments presenting a series of questions to between 100 to 346 people. The sexism showed up again.
Respondents predicted male hurricanes to be more intense the female hurricanes in one exercise. In another exercise, the hurricane sex affected how respondents said they would prepare for a hurricane.
“People imagining a ‘female’ hurricane were not as willing to seek shelter,” Shavitt said. “The stereotypes that underlie these judgments are subtle and not necessarily hostile toward women – they may involve viewing women as warmer and less aggressive than men.”
This is kind of shocking to me. Where I live, I've never heard of anyone ridiculing or taking a hurricane less seriously because of the gender of its name. A hurricane is a ****ing hurricane.
I don't think gender has to do with this. I think it has to do with people not taking Category and Category 2 hurricanes seriously enough. Hurricane Ike was only a Category 2 at landfall when it hit Galveston, TX in 2008 but because of its large size it caused a storm surge that killed hundreds. Irene and Sandy were "only" Category 1's when they went up the East Coast back in 2011 and 2012, but Irene caused major flooding in Vermont and Sandy caused extreme destruction in New Jersey as well as colliding with a cold front to become a Superstorm.
Hell, even Tropical Storm Allison from 2001 (JUST a tropical storm) caused $5 billion in damage, and it never even reached Hurricane Strength.
People need to realize that no matter what intensity the hurricane is, it can still devastate an area and kill you.
For god's sakes, sexism is never needed but this is taking it a bit too far. It's a hurricane, it doesn't matter what the name of it is, it's still a hurricane
I don't know if I can believe this.. I always thought it was the other way around because the hurricanes I can remember are all female, they always seem to be more deadly. I mean hurricane Katrina really changed how people see the name "Katrina".
this is a biT much
