Jackie Steele is Associate Professor at the Institute of Social Science, University of Tokyo. Her research focuses on comparative citizenship, democratic institutions, electoral systems design, and the representation of women, social diversity, and minority people throughout formal political processes and civil society movements. After experiencing 3.11 in Sendai with a new baby, over the past three years she has organized multi-stakeholder events in Canada and Japan in support of a critical public policy dialogue on Tohoku reconstruction and the integration of gender and diversity into disaster risk reduction strategies. Applying insights on gender-balanced decision-making and the role of women’s representation to resilience-building DRR policy, and as a collaborator of the Japan Women’s Network for DRR, Steele has worked to expand the international dialogue on gender towards a holistic feminist approach to ‘diversity’ that might enrich the language to be adopted at the 2015 WCDRR.
