Public Affairs and Security Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
8-2021
Abstract
The study of disaster-specific leadership of female university students has been largely neglected, especially during on-campus emergency eviction and evacuation. Based on the COVID-19-triggered, on-campus evictions across Canada and the United States, this cross-national partnership examined the out-of-province/state and international female university students’ leadership during the entire eviction process. Through in-depth interviews, this study revealed the female university students’ leadership behaviors during three stages: (1) pre-eviction: their self-preparedness formed an emotional foundation to support others; (2) peri-eviction: their attitude and leadership behavior enabled them to facilitate (psychologically and physically) their peers’ eviction process; and (3) post-eviction: they continued to support their peers virtually and raised the general public’s awareness regarding the plight of vulnerable and marginalized populations. This article argues that the female university students’ leadership that emerged during the eviction process became complementary to and even augmented the universities’ official efforts and beyond. This leadership represents empirical evidence that contributes to the existing literature on gender and leadership by demonstrating female youth as empowered stakeholders rather than as merely passive victims. Future studies could develop detailed stratification of gender and age dimensions in order to portray a more comprehensive picture of the younger generation’s leadership in hazards and disaster research and practice.
Recommended Citation
Wu, H., Perez-Lugo, M., Garcia, C.O. et al. Empowered Stakeholders: Female University Students’ Leadership During the COVID-19-Triggered On-campus Evictions in Canada and the United States. Int J Disaster Risk Sci 12, 581–592 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13753-021-00362-6
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Publication Title
International Journal of Disaster Risk Science
DOI
10.1007/s13753-021-00362-6
Included in
Higher Education Commons, Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration Commons
Comments
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made.