The Mary Fran Myers Award, 2012

Damairia Pakpahan
2012 Recipient of the Mary Fran Myers Gender and Disaster Award

Damairia (Damai) Pakpahan has worked for decades in the areas of gender justice and development, including work related to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and issues of climate change and earthquakes. She has personally trained more 500 civil servants on issues of gender, development, and disasters. Her work for the Aceh Tsunami Programme has significantly increased understanding of gender issues. Pakpahan's passion and advocacy for women and children in disaster clearly distinguished her as this year's winner of the Mary Fran Myers Award.

Pakpahan, of Indonesia, has served as a program officer with Oxfam in Jakarta and as a gender analyst for the Indonesia Disaster Management Society’s Gender Working Group. She is the co-founder of multiple organizations that focus on women's poverty, gender-based violence, street children, disabilities, land rights, and disaster concerns. Pakpahan has published widely on issues of gender and disasters for women's studies journals and for the broader media. Her work advocates for gender issues in the Indonesia's national disaster management law. As one nominator said, Pakpahan is the “perfect mixture of activism, feminism, journalist, and intellectual with a strong passion for gender and disaster.”