Living “Gender Empowerment” in Disaster and Diverse Space: Youth, Sexualities, Social Change, and Post-Hurricane Katrina Generations

Abstract

This article explores the notion of “gender empowerment” in relation to feminist claims around collectivity and the real lives of young women and non-binary people who grew up in post-Katrina New Orleans. Drawing on participants’ narratives, the article calls into question the assumption that collectivity and isolation are diametrically opposed experiences. Instead, it offers a more nuanced view of “alone space” as forced aloneness—not as inherently negative or disconnected, but as a vital and generative terrain through which participants navigated recovery, identity, and empowerment. The findings suggest that meaningful collective action and participation often emerged not despite but through moments of solitude that allowed for reflection on individual passions, desires, and agency. In this way, individualist approaches were intricately linked to collectivity. Participants carved out unique spaces for change that were both personal and social, finding that their most powerful engagements with collectivity were often rooted in the growth fostered during periods of isolation. These journeys were nonlinear and fraught with complexity, marked by feelings of insecurity and powerlessness, particularly around decision-making and identity formation in the wake of disaster. Yet, within the altered landscape of post-Katrina New Orleans, the experience of aloneness became an unexpected catalyst for empowerment, offering routes back into collective life on renewed and self-defined terms.

1. Introduction

Hurricane Katrina made its second landfall in New Orleans on 26 August 2005, with devastating consequences to people’s lives. Research in the immediate and longer-term aftermath highlighted that Katrina, like other disasters, revealed deep-seated race, class, and gender inequalities, which meant that some people were more affected than others (Squires & Hartman, 2013; Enarson & David, 2012; Laska & Morrow, 2006). In the years after the Hurricane Katrina disaster, the people of New Orleans sought to collectively and individually deal with these inequalities, which were created, amplified, exacerbated, and intensified by the event. In line with the research this article builds on, the post-Katrina world illustrates the ways in which disasters can transform queer communities, particularly concerning young women and gender-diverse people, using this space to make changes to their own terms. Whilst research (as listed above) has emerged that documents the important gender, race, and class disparities, very little has highlighted the importance of examining youth and sexualities. Research by Fothergill and Peek (2008) has called for further research on the experiences of young people, and D’Ooge (2008) have also highlighted the unique discrimination faced by lesbian women in the aftermath of Katrina.

The “build back better” agenda led by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) offered hope to those affected, echoing the social vulnerabilities approach to disaster developed in the 1990s (Blaikie et al., 2014). This pioneering work by Blaike et al. in the 1990s created a shift in disaster thinking towards the social aspects of disaster. They created the Capacities and Vulnerabilities model, highlighting the need to understand the complexities of living through a disaster. Within this, the notion of a window of opportunity for positive change, especially within gender relations, has emerged (Blaikie et al., 2014; Byrne & Baden, 1995). However, the notion of a window of opportunity has been deeply criticized due to a distinct lack of evidence to show that social change, specifically around gender relations, actually does change post-disaster (Bradshaw, 2013, 2014). Post-Katrina, research pointed towards a lack of real commitment to change (Henrici, 2010; Willinger, 2008). It was in this context, in 2011, that the first-named author undertook fieldwork to examine young women’s experiences of growing-up post-Katrina. During this fieldwork, they came into contact with a number of queer-identified women and gender diverse-identifying people; all had experienced positive change as a result of Hurricane Katrina (Overton, 2014).

The academic literature on “gender and disaster” has drawn attention to women’s different roles in, and experiences of, disasters (Luna & Hilhorst, 2022; Enarson et al., 2018; Bradshaw & Fordham, 2013; Bradshaw, 2013; Ariyabandu, 2006; Enarson & Morrow, 1998). This literature has mostly examined adult women who are heterosexual with—or assumed to be planning to have—children, and who are often defined within their role and responsibilities to family. Family has been examined non-normatively, for example, in female-headed households (Bradshaw, 2002, 2010, 2013), but there has always been an underlying assumption of heterosexuality and adulthood. Adult women may have different needs, interests, and responsibilities than young women, as suggested by a small body of existing literature (Petraroli & Baars, 2022; Tapscott, 2018; Grossman-Thompson, 2016), but little is known about this group. Signposts within wider disaster research, including research on gender and disasters, do suggest specific needs and interests when stages in one’s life-course are factored in (Carlton et al., 2022; Fothergill & Peek, 2008). Thus, our original contribution offers an intersectional lens by contributing to both youth culture research and queer studies within the context of disaster research by filling this void in the existing literature.

Queer women and gender-diverse people may not fit neatly within what we know about gender and disasters. In fact, studies indicate unique barriers and experiences (Yamashita, 2024; Parkinson et al., 2022). Post-Katrina, this has been demonstrated by a study by D’Ooge (2008) in the immediate aftermath, where it was suggested that sexuality was an organizing factor in lesbian women gaining access to support services. More recently, Curcio (2023) has presented criticisms around the lack of government support for sexual minorities and gender-diverse people. Both youth and sexuality, then, require further investigation, particularly as intersecting axes. The lens through which we are looking at this is a queer feminist approach to understanding gendered experiences of disasters via a little-understood group: young queer-identified women and non-binary people. The existing body of research suggests that these groups have unique experiences (Overton, 2014, 2025; Yamashita, 2024; Rashid & Michaud, 2000). This article calls into question the notion of collectivity and isolation as diametrically opposed experiences and calls into question the idea that isolation, particularly through forced aloneness, is always a negative experience, suggesting instead that individual alone space can be helpful in recovering from disaster, and that individual alone space is ultimately related back to the collective.

2. Gender, Youth, Disasters, and Sexualities

The “gender and disaster” scholarship is rich and growing, revealing the importance of gender in all stages of disaster (Alexander & Wajjwalku, 2024; Enarson et al., 2018; Bradshaw, 2013; Enarson & Morrow, 1998). That is not to say that all women and all men experience disaster as two homogenous and distinct groups; rather, there are a number of important intersections. Gender and disaster researchers have drawn attention to a number of these intersectional axes, particularly race, class, and poverty (Bradshaw, 2013; Enarson & David, 2012; Enarson & Dhar Chakrabarti, 2009; Enarson & Fordham, 2000). However, the axes of sexuality and age, particularly from a life-course perspective, have received much less attention. There are a number of the existing studies within gender and disaster studies that, whilst not focusing on age specifically, do mention in passing that age is a factor (Bradshaw & Fordham, 2013; Saito, 2012; S. Fisher, 2010; Ishrad et al., 2012; Felten-Biermann, 2006; Bradshaw, 2002). Indeed, post-Katrina, a large-scale research project by Fothergill and Peek (2008) highlighted that we must develop our knowledge about young people’ lives post-disaster. From the 2010’s, gender and disasters research began to emphasize the need to focus on both women and girls, with the Coalition of Adolescent Girls and Plan International taking the lead, demonstrating the importance of seeing girls, especially teenager girls, as a group in their own right (Tapscott, 2018; Grossman-Thompson, 2016; Plan International, 2013). Few studies, however, have examined gender, age, and sexualities together (Overton, 2014, 2025; Rashid & Michaud, 2000). These studies, however highlight the unique experiences for young women and gender-diverse people post-disaster, particularly around the importance of friendships (Overton, 2025), community (Overton, 2014, 2025), sibling relationships (Overton, 2025; Rashid & Michaud, 2000), and the complexities of decision-making power (Overton, 2014, 2022, 2025; Rashid & Michaud, 2000).

There is a growing body of work calling for a “queering” approach to disasters to take into account the unique experiences of sexual and gender minorities (Leonard et al., 2025; Rushton, 2025; Goldsmith et al., 2022; Rushton et al., 2019). Post-Katrina, D’Ooge (2008) highlighted that lesbian women faced greater discrimination in the aftermath. However, despite being known as “the gay capitol” of the South in the USA, very little is known about how queer communities coped with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In wider research about sexual and gender minorities’ experiences post-disaster, the existing research suggests that LGBTQ+ people are more likely to face discrimination (Mann et al., 2024; Haworth et al., 2022). Just like the research around ciswomen, however, LGBTQ+ people can also have unique capacities, such as the example of the Waria community (Balgos et al., 2012). We seek to contribute to the growing body of work around expanding our understanding of gendered axes post-disaster from an intersectionality perspective (Crenshaw, 1989; Kotsinas, 2020; Kuran et al., 2020; Gupta et al., 2024). Building upon the gender and disaster scholarship, and particularly on feminist theories of collectivity and collective and individual space, this research examines young women and teenage girls’ reflections on negotiating power and space to make choices and explore their own interests as they “grew up” after Hurricane Katrina.

3. Methodology, Positionality, and Reflections on Sociological Framings of “Crisis”

This research is based on qualitative oral and life histories, semi-structured interviews, and fieldnotes collected in two phases by the first-named author during the periods of May–June 2012 and November–December 2012 in New Orleans, Louisiana. This article is based on the sixteen life/oral history interviews across two phases of life-history interviews, which will be discussed in further detail below.

While the data were originally gathered in 2012 as part of a different study, a methodological decision was made to re-visit these data a decade later in light of ongoing global crises and disasters, where the emerging research has not yet addressed some of the key issues we are exploring in this article. We still know very little about young women and gender-diverse peoples’ experiences of disaster, and in a world where disasters and inequalities are increasing, we need to continue to learn more about how different groups are affected, as well as their unique capacities. Moreover, we are also juxtaposing our personal senses of temporality and change outside of the field and within our positionality, thus creating a narrative arc that extends and continues the storyline of the participants by way of episodic storytelling through the insights we draw from their accounts. The “cold hard facts” of Hurricane Katrina and other disasters, generally resting on death tolls and economic costs, do not allow for an exploration of the meaning and perception of an event from the point of view of survivors; however, oral and life histories can begin to capture the fabric of lived realities (Borger, 2010; Freund & Quilici, 1996).

3.1. The Transition from Phase One to Phase Two

This research is divided into two phases to mark the shift in focus from gender and youth to sexuality, gender, and youth. The original aim of this research was to understand what it was like to “grow up” after Hurricane Katrina through the eyes and words of young women and in their own terms, much of which was unknown at the time when the research was conducted. Sexualities were not the focus during Phase One of the study but emerged out of Phase One due to the participants themselves drawing attention to sexual identity, often over gender, and because of this, the researcher chose to focus on sexualities more explicitly in Phase Two.

Phase One: Originally, the first-named author sought to access the most disadvantaged young women, particularly those who were from the 9th ward and/or who had been evacuated to the Superdome and/or lived in FEMA-supplied temporary trailers. As an outsider, it became clear to the first-named author that whilst research with this group is important, they were not the person to conduct it through gatekeeper interviews. Gatekeeper interviews were intended to support the first-named author to gain access to target populations. Gaining the respect of gatekeepers and establishing a presence in the community are crucial activities for credible community research (Borger, 2010, p. 11; Campbell et al., 2006; Salmon, 2007; Rashid, 2007). Four gatekeepers were interviewed, and one (Jaz, discussed below) was successful in reaching the target population. The three other gatekeepers were not sufficiently comfortable with the author’s “outsider” status to refer them on to the communities they worked with.

Phase Two: The new focus led to the research exploring the lives of queer-identified young women from lower- to upper middle-class backgrounds. In this sense, participants were privileged by class, to varying degrees, which enabled them access to resources post-Katrina that aided their evacuation and recovery. However, they were also “voiceless” at the time, being young women and teenage girls who were yet to have a stake at the table in post-disaster research or practice. Further, as sexual minorities and gender-diverse people are a historically excluded community, this is a unique study of a little-known group.

Sexuality, gender, and youth became the focus and involved follow-up interviews with existing participants, as well as new participants using more direct probes around sexualities. As such, this study also includes “gender-diverse” participants. The researcher did not emphasize gender diversity enough in the title of the original study and earlier papers; it was only on reflection one day during teaching that the realization emerged that this had not been done. We think this demonstrates an important aspect of our research and the significance of reflexivity, where, even through past research, we can still learn new things.

3.2. Oral and Life Histories

Oral and life histories were the main data collection method because the research focus was on lived experience and reflection over a seven-year time period. Oral and life histories provide particularly rich information due to the “messy” nature of recollection and memory as ways for people to make sense of themselves and their experiences (Stephens, 2010, p. 82). This type of approach emphasizes storytelling, which is an important way for traditionally marginalized communities to visibilize their experiences, as well as through research (Toliver, 2021; Farrant, 2014; Phillips & Bunda, 2018). Oral and life histories help us to see the world through other perspectives and to understand how individuals organize their pasts in the present and their relationships to others, allowing for insight into their experiences (Borger, 2010, p. 10; Haynes, 2006; Lawler, 2000; Crook, 1998).

To define “youth”, participants were able to self-select whether they defined as a young woman, and during the “shout out” to recruit participants at one of the gender performance nights, Jaz emphasized that this study was about queer identified people reflecting on growing up post-Hurricane Katrina. This meant that the age of participants who took part were aged 18 to 42 at the time of the oral and life-history interviews, reflecting on what is was like to “grow up” over the last seven years in the wake of Katrina. Their experiences reflected on their ages at the time, which were between 13 and 35 years old. The oral and life stories collected very much reflect the temporalities associated with “growing up”, and gender diversity could be explored within this context. Sixteen participants took part, resulting in twenty life story interviews in total because four participants took part in both Phase One and Phase Two, further demonstrating temporality and change, which is rarely seen in post-disaster research. Follow-up interviews allowed for deeper insight into participants’ lives, as well as space to document changes through reflection (Frank, 1995; Hall Carpenter Archives/Lesbian Oral History Group, 1989).

Fourteen of the sixteen life-history participants identified as queer in some way [ranging from politically queer (1), trans (2), nonbinary (1), bicurious (2), bisexual (1), and pansexual (1), to lesbian/queer women (8)]. Three participants were made up of a range of ethnic groups, including three African Americans, one Hispanic participant, and the majority being white. Of the white participants, one was of Cajun descent, and one was of Jewish descent. Most participants lived in New Orleans Parish at the time of Katrina. Two lived further afield but still in Louisiana. Two hail from New Orleans but were living “out of state” at the time of Katrina. One participant who took part in Phase Two moved to New Orleans some years after Hurricane Katrina but comes from a “disaster prone” state in the South. Four of the participants moved to New Orleans for academic studies prior to Katrina and remained.

3.3. Recruitment and Sampling

The participants were recruited through gatekeepers, snowballing, and reaching out in private Facebook groups. Many took part based on personal connections the researcher made during fieldwork through Jaz (anonymized name), a research participant and unintentional gatekeeper. The researcher’s social connections through Jaz paved the way for the research focus to shift towards sexualities. The first-named author was spending time with Jaz and her friends as well as attending weekly gender performance events by The Kings (anonymized name). During social events, the first-named author would talk about why they were in New Orleans to Jaz and her friends, and they began to talk about their experiences. During research diary reflections, it became apparent to the first-named author that sexualities are even more marginalized post-disaster than gender and youth. This led to revisiting the inclusion criteria to focus more specifically on queer-identified young women. This shows that taking an intersectionality-based approach to research means being adaptive in practice. Practically, this meant that whilst the original research intended to examine the most marginalized young women through trying to find people from lower socioeconomic and class groups and black and ethnic minority groups, what was appropriate for this particular researcher, based on her characteristics, was something different. The first-named author is a queer-identified, British, white ciswoman from a middle-class background.

Jaz offered to do a “shout out” at one of the performance nights to see if any audience members might be interested in taking part.

3.4. Data Analysis

This study employed thematic analysis to explore how young women navigated life after Hurricane Katrina, particularly in relation to gender and sexuality. The analysis followed Braun and Clarke’s (2006) framework, supported by McCormack’s (2004) “storying the story” method, which helped structure life histories while honoring the complexity of lived experience. The aim was to bring individual stories together into meaningful themes that reveal shared patterns and meaningful insights (Patton, 2014)—what Patton (2014) describes as the “fruit” of qualitative research.

3.5. Coding Process

The analysis began with verbatim transcription, followed by manual first-cycle coding using colored pens, memo stickers, and notebooks. This initial phase focused on identifying recurring meanings, emotions, and expressions linked to the study’s objectives. In particular, it focused on four main questions:

✓

Did participants describe making Katrina-specific life choices?

✓

How did gender and sexuality intersect in their experiences?

✓

How were intimate relationships re-defined post-Katrina?

✓

How did participants define and experience “disaster”?

As themes emerged, these were grouped into larger categories, ensuring that the researcher highlighted subthemes that added nuance or reflected intersections across themes. In some cases, participants’ quotes fit into multiple categories, reflecting the fluid, interconnected nature of the issues discussed. For example, stories about personal transformation after Katrina often intersect with narratives of gender and sexuality, revealing the complexity of these experiences. Memo stickers and Word comments were used throughout the process to capture the initial interpretations and link themes across different interviews.

3.6. Dealing with Complexity and Anomalies

Rather than seeking simple conclusions, this analysis embraced the inherent messiness of oral history (James, 2000; Stephens, 2010). The aim was to uncover the contradictions and anomalies within participants’ stories. For instance, Elizabeth’s account of her struggle with addiction offered a starkly different transformation than those of other participants, whose experiences focused more on relational struggles regarding their sexuality. McCormack’s (2004) “storying the story” method helped organize these complex and at times contradictory narratives, allowing the researcher to explore both their individual emotional depth and thematic connections. By accepting the messiness of memory (Summerfield, 2004), the researcher was able to reveal not just what was said but also the silences, contradictions, and emotional tensions embedded in the participants’ stories.

3.7. Using Theory “Against the Grain”

This analysis was underpinned by feminist and postcolonial theoretical frameworks. Drawing on Spivak (2012), the researcher aimed to read “against the grain” of dominant narratives, focusing on how difference is represented, constructed, and sometimes silenced. Re-listening to interviews provided an opportunity to engage with the emotional layers and affective dimensions of the stories, reinforcing the reflexive nature of the analysis and offering a deeper understanding of how participants’ experiences were shaped by historical, social, and cultural contexts.

3.8. Quoting, Voice, and Presentation

Participants’ quotations were lightly edited for clarity, ensuring that their voices were represented authentically while maintaining the formal tone of the study. This decision was made carefully, following feminist critiques of editing participants’ speech (Kirsche, 1999; Maynard & Purvis, 2013). The aim was to balance clarity with authenticity, ensuring that participants’ emotional and political voices were retained, while integrating them smoothly into the academic framework.

4. The Gendered Power of Spaces

Gender and disaster scholarship sheds light on the power of collectivity and community (Enarson et al., 2018; Enarson & Morrow, 1998; Fordham & Ketteridge, 1998). Paradoxically, as a result of collective participation, scholarship also warns about increased burdens of care and responsibility that reinforce traditional gender roles (Overton, 2022; Bradshaw, 2014). Just as women and men have more or less access to different types of spaces, it is also noted that women and men use space differently, including those pertaining to social life, family life, and paid work post-disaster (Yonder et al., 2005). However, traditionally, women have had to fight for access to spaces or to have a voice within those spaces, particularly public spaces. Paradoxically, women have continued to be at the forefront of community and grassroots organizing (Enarson et al., 2018; David, 2012; GROOTS, 2007; Bari, 1998). Spaces, then, are loaded with gendered power relations.

Women’s and queer activism have been visible in New Orleans pre- and post-Katrina within both established and newly formed groups. For example, pre- and post-Katrina, INCITE have organized around race and gender, and The LGBT Center have focused on providing safe spaces for queer people. Women of the Storm emerged directly out of Katrina and organized to aid in reconstruction efforts; it was led by largely white, “elite” women who used their middle- and upper-class backgrounds to make a positive change (David, 2012). BreakOut, established in 2011, is focused on restorative justice fighting institutionalized violence against LGBTQ youth especially African diaspora, Latinx, Indigenous, and mixed-race youth. Each group is issue-led, which can mean that one issue is centralized, but for INCITE and BreakOut, gender and sexuality are inherently intersectional.

Most of the participants in this research, however, tended to align participation in collective space with personal interests, but some did have existing links with established groups, including those highlighted above. The other collective spaces included participation in gender performance groups. The ways in which research participants engaged with collectivity was through artistic and creative expression, such as gender performance and through meaningful employment such as activism or issue-based job roles. What joins these together is that all of the collective endeavors were freely chosen by participants and based on interest, which is what created the sense of positive change and empowerment through time alone. This research study highlights that notions of space can mean something specific to women, especially when women collectively strive to achieve access to that space.

5. Individual Space: “That Moment in That Silence”

The individual space opened up by Katrina took participants away from “normal” everyday life, which created reflection and space to think and make new decisions about how they were going to live their life. Wider studies have shown that spaces—home, neighborhood, and public—changing post-disaster can have profound effects on post-disaster experiences and (un)belonging (Cheshire et al., 2018). The findings of this study reflect the complexities of individual spaces as conducive loneliness and isolation but also allowing for time to oneself in which to rethink and reflect on one’s life and future. This space was very specific to the aftermath of the storm, as well as temporary, but this period of aloneness enabled many young women in the sample to make these new decisions about the course of their lives. Hairdresser Elizabeth, aged 23 at the time of the interview, illustrates this:

I’m guessing that everybody had that moment in that silence. The silence right after the hurricane had hit and it stopped raining and the birds weren’t chirping, nothing was moving, everything was still. I feel like everybody was like standing outside just taking it all in…Katrina [3 sec pause] just changed everything… I was really, really bad, I was on drugs and I was just bad but Katrina helped me realise this is the turning point in my life. I spent a lot of time thinking.

(Elizabeth, hairdresser, 23 years old)

Individual time in silence provided a significant space for Elizabeth to make new choices. For Elizabeth, it was the silence of her surroundings, which were usually filled with the sounds of nature, movement, and people, that created a feeling of something different, as well as space for something different, which allowed her to make changes in her life. In that moment, where everything stood still, she changed her life. It was this space of acceptance that was the catalyst of change for Elizabeth in many ways: she got “clean”, came out as a lesbian, became involved with The Kings as an audience member, discovered she was “pretty smart”, and followed her dream to become a hairstylist.

Other participants pinpointed a “moment” (Elizabeth guessed right in a sense). These moments were not always of silence but a dimension that marked pre-Katrina life as distinct from post-Katrina life, characterized by something normal becoming changed or noticing something insignificant that became important, often involving, as Elizabeth suggested, space to think. Space to think was important, but making their own choices did not happen in a vacuum, and decision-making was often very difficult, whether participants were able to make their own choices or not.

Aloneness could be terribly isolating and, at times, required extraordinary resilience. In spite of these challenges, participants found ways to cope, demonstrating resilience but also that resilience comes at great cost. This is illustrated by the story of Billie, who faced daily discrimination from her aunt whilst she was displaced by Katrina over the course of four months. Her aunt began to make a series of homophobic and transphobic comments against Billie because of her sexual and gender identities, neither of which she had ever even discussed with her aunt previously:

I am not standard issue female…I identified as trans since I was 14 and never really stopped identifying as that…[but[my aunt ‘outed’ me] in such a way that just caused me problems…On the one hand it’s like my family kind of pushed me to identify as a lesbian and on the other hand they’re yelling things at me that are gross and weird.

(Billie, student, part-time hospitality worker and aspiring writer, 22 years old)

Billie drew on her personal strengths and as someone who had always been comfortable on her own, finding her own way even where this was far from ideal.

This sentiment is echoed in the experience of Jay, who escaped from a cramped motel room space and what she felt like was judgement from her family though watching films in the hotel lobby and exploring the architecture:

I was keeping a video journal, even before Katrina, with a lot of my thoughts and experiences and everything, a lot of those videos have been lost too, lost over time…It was a very long intricate path, each story is like a dot in an impressionist painting but if I had to pick one crucial moment, the 21 days in that hotel room talking to friends online, my online friends, film making forums and stuff that was when I realised that I wanted to make movies…[I was] coming across a lot of independent productions and stuff, it was my first exposures to that stuff. It made me realise I didn’t need a hundred million dollars to make something, it was very empowering since I knew what I wanted to do… I hope my films can be something to inspire cultural movements.

(Jay)

This commitment continued, and Jay began pursuing filmmaking for social change, illustrating the importance of creative expression as part of identity and social change. Space to “simply” be themselves was important to young women, especially where they felt family living situations did not allow for this. Previous research has drawn attention to the fact that women need to be seen and see themselves as more than “just women” (Fordham, 2009, p. 184). To extend this idea into our research, participants in this study discussed that they did not have to be limited; rather than be “more” than just women, many decided to rewrite the script of what it meant to be “women” for themselves as individuals:

Well I felt like I could really live my life how I wanted to, especially doing the homeless thing and it was after Katrina that I became polyamorous so I guess it was kind of affecting.

(Phoebe, full-time mum)

Phoebe was clear that her age as a young adult impacted how she experienced life post-Katrina and the decisions she made, but she was also making decisions as an individual. Taking charge, making decisions, and becoming more confident as individuals was an interesting theme to emerge. Betty reflects here on her Katrina experience where she found herself, aged 13, sharing her house with strangers, but isolated from her friends and social life from school:

You’ll never guess it now but I used to sit there and I wouldn’t say a word, until somebody talked to me. Now I’m in this situation where all these different people are coming in so I had to try to break out of my shell as much as possible or I’m just gonna go nuts, I guess it kind of helped my personality I would say, with other people, I can talk to anybody now.

(Betty, chef and gender performance artist, 19 years old)

Reflecting on the achievements of going through something very stressful enabled Betty to highlight a personal journey of growth. Some explicitly identified that these changes would not have been possible had Katrina not happened. For example, Billie made the decision to stay in New Orleans rather than go away for University studies as a result of Katrina, which, in hindsight, she felt was a bad decision, but one that she had to make because of the impact Katrina had on her feeling that staying in the city would help to protect it. Indeed, when the first-named author initially met with Billie in May 2012, she was struggling to come to terms with her decisions and still felt that Katrina had a hold over her life, but that she was working through ways of coping with her choices. But when the researcher talked to Billie six months later in November 2012, she was excited about how she had gone from “coping” with her choices to taking charge:

How I wound up here now making this decision is because of Katrina but the decision itself is happily free of it, cos I’ve figured stuff out now.

(Billie)

Whilst Billie was able to move from coping to feeling positive, it does need to be noted that decision-making as a result of Katrina was not always positive, and for Billie, this process took seven years to understand.

Saito’s (2012) research found that for adult women, individual spaces for women post-disaster can be much appreciated, providing relaxation, time, and space away from family responsibilities. Our research also demonstrates that space alone can be important for young women and gender-diverse people, but for different reasons:

Katrina really made me see things differently like before I was gonna be going to medical school. All my family has been in medicine in some way, so there was always that push. Then the hurricane hit, and I had this choice to go to one place or to go to another that was more theatre. I can’t not follow my heart.

(Beaux, nanny and gender performance artist, 23 years old)

Prior to Katrina, Beaux and other participants felt like they had been making decisions in their lives for others, particularly for parents, rather than decisions that would make them happy themselves, but Katrina instigated a change.

Young women have shown that their ability to cope post-disaster goes beyond passivity and actually leads to creativity and innovation in some cases and in self-empowerment in others, but some noted that with this positive change also came a great pressure to be grown-up:

With any kind of tragedy it makes a person grow up more cos you learn things and you grow, and how severe it can really get and I did kind of have to grow up a little bit.

(Betty)

Individual space allows for thinking and reflecting but can also be isolating, as the existing literature suggests, but young women found ways to turn this into a decision-making space with respect to their futures. The participants demonstrate, however, that change is most meaningful at their own individual and personal level.

Change is possible, and whilst it is true cultural mores are stubborn, it is also true, as indicated by existing scholarship, that norms and stereotypes are not immutable (Mehta, 2009, p. 70). Cultural and social critique of post-Katrina life was also reflected in the stories of other participants, with one participant, Sunny, noting that she noticed that New Orleans’ activism is often expressed through art. This and other studies suggest that art as an expression of feelings to make sense of a disaster like Katrina is an important part of recovery. This involved artistic expression and gender performance art, which also contributed to self-development and becoming who they wanted to be. This is illustrated by Beaux:

I am most proud of the fact that instead of the storm breaking me, it inspired me. I went to college for art instead of medicine. I felt empowered through art. We wrote poetry, took pictures, performed movement pieces, danced, anything we could possibly do to express how we felt about the storm. It empowered me because this storm showed us how little we had control over. Expression through art allowed me to take back the power. I was able to express my feelings of loss, confusion and pain through many artistic endeavors and I used the storm to inspire writing and performing in a show with my senior class.

(Beaux)

Katrina became a tool for Beaux to create change and also gave her the ideas to develop her creative voice, which came to be useful for her performance in providing social and cultural critique. By creating stories about her experiences and interpretations of events, she could “take back the power” through having a voice and a presence to tell her story to audiences so that others could try to understand, relate, and just see. Individual reflection and space meant that participants formed their interests more clearly on the realization that life can change suddenly.

6. Collective Space: “Let’s Put This Thing Back Together”

Research has shown that where women engage with community and cultural space, this space can sometimes enable women to come to terms with disasters (Enarson, 2000). Further, increased participation of women in “public” life is seen to be crucial to the “post-disaster window of opportunity” to transform gender relations (Byrne & Baden, 1995). Participation then, often through collectivity, is seen as beneficial to women’s empowerment, with individual “space” associated with isolation, loneliness, and a lack of power and autonomy, as it has been conceptualized to be forced (Cornwall, 2003; J. Fisher, 1993; Rashid & Michaud, 2000). However, research has also critiqued and problematized collective approaches, particularly where they are “top down”, noting that these types of projects rarely result in empowerment for women themselves (Doneys et al., 2020). The findings of our research shed further light on this issue, demonstrating the complexities related to participating in social change. More “traditional” collectivity is still attractive because of a wider issue-based commitment to activism and positive societal change on a personal level. Five participants travelled this route, often expressed through “meaningful” employment that gave back to the people of New Orleans, as illustrated by Margot:

After Katrina I knew I wanted to stay here and help build a better New Orleans. I started as a volunteer with an NGO serving the Hispanic community and later I got a paid job with them after I graduated…I moved into my own project helping reclaim money that wasn’t paid to Hispanic migrants and any need that the population had because I’m bilingual.

(Margot, social justice charity worker)

Dedicating personal time for social change was a common theme amongst the participants, and for these five, this also led to or increased paid work. The meaningfulness and making a difference to “build a better New Orleans” was often more important than salary; for example, Margot waitressed at the weekends to pay the bills. Similarly, Sarah-Jane gave up a fully funded graduate program across the country to move back to New Orleans and work on fair housing, which was a big issue for marginalized communities both pre- but more so post-Katrina:

I had interned at the housing project which is where I work now when I was at college and they had paid me to do some contract work on education and outreach before. I was in touch with them to make sure everything was fine with the staff and then and I had a New Orleans party for them to raise money and followed up after that to ask if they needed help [and] April 2006 I was negotiating about having a job…Then everything fell into place.

(Sarah-Jane, social justice charity director)

As Sarah-Jane and Margot illustrate, participants used their commitment to social justice by working for marginalized communities, such as African American communities and Latinx populations, addressing issues of fair housing and access to payment for work. Their identities were closely linked to being able to work for the greater good of the city.

Being able to be involved in creating space for wellness for the wider community attracted participants to creative roles, but particularly queer people and young people, as Phoebe points out:

We needed a community centre clean up and more people came and helped and we got more into it too…with The Healing Centre and before that place didn’t exist and now it does and it’s an amazing building and amazing place and I think a lot are getting built now, and community and stuff.

(Phoebe)

For others, their engagement with justice and collective action was linked more to their own identities and personal experiences, and this often led into creative expression. Gender performance and queer community was where nine participants focused their interests, either new or renewed. Of those nine, eight were involved with a group called The Kings, and one was involved in queer burlesque and drag and played a key role in the creation of a more lesbian-focused/queer women’s alternative to Southern Decadence. For those involved with The Kings, six were performers and three were audience members. Of the audience members, two had personal relationships with performers.

The Kings performed as a troupe on a weekly basis, taking the midnight show. Before Katrina, the show took place at a central French Quarter location and continued there until 2012, when they moved to a different location for approximately a year (at the time of Phase One research) and then moved back to the French Quarter (at the time of the Phase Two research). All those involved with The Kings felt that the troupe was a positive space, particularly influenced by the events of Hurricane Katrina:

I wasn’t around then [at the time of Katrina] but the Kings was like a big thing after Katrina. They came back pretty much straight away and it was a big thing for the gay women’s community to have, for lesbians, not even just lesbians for the queer community each week, they had that on a Tuesday.

(Jessica, hair stylist and gender performance artist, age 24)

Even though Jessica “wasn’t around” (she was only a young teenager) in The Kings at the time of Katrina, the importance of the post-Katrina time to the troupe had been passed down in stories within their community, becoming part of their own history and sense of belonging in the troupe. Queer communities across the globe have been active in post-disaster recovery, but very little documents or recognizes these strengths (Gorman-Murray et al., 2017); thus, is it highly important to document the role queer communities play in post-disaster recovery, as Kayla illustrates:

I went down to the pub one night because we…had nothing to do but drink [laughs] and the pub owner said they had people show up on Tuesdays, on weekends, asking when we would be back on so we were like alright, let’s put this thing back together…Our first show back was on November 15th and there were 5 drag kings and we did a full…12 acts and you can imagine, it was total chaos.

(Kayla, gender performance artist, Age 27)

Even though people were returning, many were still displaced, living in temporary accommodation or rebuilding their homes without access to full amenities and trying to get back to “normal” life. The Kings’ Tuesday night show was one of the first steps in their lives to “put things back together”, where queer women could go and enjoy themselves and have a good time at a time when everything else was upside down. Kayla, together with Jaz, “put the show back together” in part to deal with their own displacement and in part in response to demand from returned patrons. Katrina was a significant part of the troupe’s sense of community, of how they carved back their space for queer women so soon after the event itself, demonstrating the power of the collective to create positive community space. That The Kings had “come back” so quickly and filled an important gap in the lives of queer women and continued to perform every single week ever since gave space to a community that some research shows received little recognition post-Katrina and faced discrimination (D’Ooge, 2008; INCITE, 2018).

Looking through a “post” post-disaster lens, seven years after the storm itself, revealed far-reaching effects for the future members of the troupe. This is most clearly illustrated by the account of Betty, who compared her different experiences of Katrina and Isaac. Turning 13 years old in the aftermath of Katrina, Betty was frustrated that all the decisions made at that time by her parents never involved any consultation with her, which included giving up her room to her mum’s friends and sleeping on the couch. During Isaac, on the other hand, Betty was almost 20 and housesitting for friends in central New Orleans, making her own decisions. She had also joined The Kings, which gave her access to her queer community and, post-Isaac, allowed her to be in charge of her own post-storm experience, unlike in the case of Katrina, where she was not involved in decision-making at all:

I’ve definitely grown a lot in the past 7 years and I’m really glad I joined the troupe cos I can be myself…I don’t have to keep secrets, I can be like this is me, I’ve learned a lot from different people in the troupe. It’s how I came to the term pansexual…If you’re not around the gay community you would be in a boat without a paddle.

(Betty)

At home, Betty has to keep her sexual and gender identities a secret, but whilst house sitting for friends in the city at the time of Isaac, she was able to be herself. This space was identified as important, particularly when it was based on personal interests; for example, Betty found the collective space of The Kings to be an avenue through which to get to know herself better, as well as to pursue her creative interests.

All participants’ involvement in collectivity and positive change was through desire and pleasure, based on strong personal interests. For The Kings, this interest began as entertainment for a group of friends in gender performance art and then evolved to take on a community focus. LGBTQ+ people often access and engage with a wide range of community support in “normal” times (Priola & O’Shea, 2023), and whilst these could be disrupted post-disaster, we know very little about how these might be supportive in terms of community support and increased social capital, which has been found in wider studies, more generally, to be an important recovery factor post-disaster (Chamlee-Wright & Storr, 2011). For those interested in the arts more broadly, this was also coupled with a desire to do something that made a difference. Wider gender and disasters research about engaging with creativity to make meaning out of disaster and trauma demonstrates the importance of involving personal interests in the process of recovery and even empowerment (Enarson, 2000). Similarly, those who chose careers based on helping marginalized communities were also focused on making a difference. All these are interests that participants chose to follow themselves, and in terms of feeling genuinely “empowered”, this is an important finding.

The 2010s marked a change in international policy arenas when interest among international actors, often through an International Development lens, began to look at “adolescent girls’” roles in disaster risk reduction (DRR) (Plan International, 2013; Coalition for Adolescent Girls, 2012). Through being hailed as the “key” to lifting their families and communities out of poverty, “adolescent” girls have been drafted into responsibility roles in development initiatives, using them as a resource through which to channel aid to their families (especially younger siblings) and communities (especially poverty alleviation) (Chant, 2016). Women, and now girls, have seen their workloads (including carework and homework) and responsibilities to others increase with the popularization of gender and development, while receiving little to none of the benefit (Bradshaw, 2013). Whilst teenage girls and young women may be concerned for their families and communities, research has shown that they have specific needs, interests, and experiences unique to their cohorts (Espina & Canoy, 2019; Grossman-Thompson, 2016; Overton, 2014; Rashid & Michaud, 2000).

The findings of this research demonstrate that young people, and especially young women, may not hold the decision-making power and/or resources to focus on their chosen interests, but it is imperative, in service to “real” gender empowerment for collective activities, especially those related to uplifting the community, for women to demonstrate the agency to make choices freely.

7. Conclusions

Young adults have received very little research attention post-disaster; rather, they are invisibilized into children and adolescents (Fothergill & Peek, 2008; Rashid & Michaud, 2000) or treated as adults (Ishrad et al., 2012), even though young adult needs and interests are different (Bradshaw, 2014; Overton, 2014). When they are intersected with sexualities and gender, they receive even less attention (Overton, 2014, 2025). However, the emerging body of research shows that, independently, both groups—i.e., youth and LGBTQ+ groups—have specific disaster experiences. Although it may be tempting to frame both groups through a lens of vulnerability and invisibility, it is essential to also recognize the resourcefulness, resilience, and capacity that disaster survivors demonstrate as they navigate and emerge from catastrophe. The participants in this research demonstrate that for survivors, disaster can open up spaces for change. This change was possible due to participants pursuing their personal interests and using their creative skills, thus enabling their agency to unfold freely. The group of young women who shared their experiences of growing up after Hurricane Katrina revealed that they all felt times of loneliness, isolation, and strain, but that this led to the understanding that life could change in a moment. Katrina opened up a temporal context, but also specific space, that led to change. Whilst collectivity has historically been associated with feminism and feminist activism, particularly through consciousness-raising, individual space, on the other hand, has been associated with isolation and powerlessness, which limits women’s mobility and choice. In the case of the participants of this study, this aloneness created reflection and a drive to make positive changes in their own lives and even for the greater good of New Orleans and local residents. The links between personal interests, particularly creative skills, and disaster response has rarely been explored in the disasters literature in relation to queer young people, and more research is needed.

These findings challenge the assumed association of individual space with forced isolation, finding instead that assuming powerlessness misses both chosen aloneness and agency within forced aloneness. This study found that individual space, even where it is not necessarily chosen, can have positive effects for young women and non-binary people in making decisions about their lives, particularly when coupled with the pursuit of a new or existing interest, often involving collectivity, thus showing that individual and collective space can be intricately related and complicated. Importantly, the necessity of existing access to resources for this positive change to occur cannot be overstated, and this points towards the protection of resource privileges. Going forward, investment in community-led collective groups, particularly from socioeconomically disadvantaged locations, could lead to positive change through gender empowerment. Collective endeavors, projects, and programs must be led by participants’ own pleasures and desires, freely chosen by people themselves, and in this context, young women, sexual minorities, and gender-diverse people must be supported to pursue their interests in order for them to be truly “empowering”. Finally, while we acknowledge the necessary limitations of this study, which had specific research questions, aims, and objectives which conditioned the data collection process, this study also paves the way for new research to emerge and to be studied in a variety of locations where disasters have occurred. The results of this study have culturally specific aspects that are limited to the particular historical circumstances of the post-Hurricane Katrina, yet there are lingering effects of fading racism and racial inequality that continue to emerge in the post-civil rights era during the post-truth populist and divisive Trump administration (Valcore et al., 2023). Furthermore, the increasing polarization of political views shown by white supremacists, the religious right, and conservatism trends emerging in African American, Latinx, and Asian American communities in the United States demonstrates the need to expand our research to new translocal and transnational geographies.