An exploration of gender vulnerability to floods and its implication on social security in Kinondoni district, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

The study explored gender susceptibility to floods and its implication on social security and involved the use of a mixed methods approach whereby both primary and secondary data were analyzed concurrently. The study engaged hundred (n=100) participants from households and 20 from focus group discussion from which descriptive statistics, correlation analysis were done through SPSS 20 and Microsoft excel as well as content analysis. Furthermore, the study used systematic random sampling was in selecting households to be studied while study sites were determined purposively. The findings of the study showed that temperature has a significant increasing trend while rainfall amount is relatively decreasing and the changes are captured on predictabilities, changes in intensities, and spatial distribution. Despite the increasing flooding events, correlation value with rainfall found to be 0.5 indicating a weak to moderate association, flooding in the city has been causing physical injuries, deaths, loss of homes, properties, infrastructures altogether undermine social security. These impact were found to be very severe to women, children and elderly based on time of staying at home, roles and responsibilities to their families, physical capabilities as well as statuses they have in the family and at community level. The study finally concludes that, though there are heavy sporadic downpour flooding seen to largely caused by planning and infrastructures issues thus call for a gender informed strategy but also stressing the need of inclusion of climate change scenarios in all planning and development activities in the city.