Sangeun Lee (she/her) is a second-year Master of Public Policy student at Georgetown’s McCourt School of Public Policy, concentrating in environment and energy policy. At Georgetown, she is a Graduate Research Assistant at the LOCATED Lab, where her work focuses on environmental data justice and disaster governance. Before Georgetown, she worked at Agora Energiewende in Berlin, where she analyzed decarbonization pathways and energy transition strategies across East and Southeast Asia. She earned her undergraduate degree from Yonsei University, where she double majored in Sustainable Development and Science, Technology, and Policy.
Project: Women on the Line: When Smartphone Ownership is Not Enough for Disaster Justice
In several Caribbean small island developing states, the gender gap in smartphone ownership is narrow, yet existing research suggests women have less access to disaster risk information than men. Expanding device access has been the dominant policy response to gendered climate communication gaps. The relationship between device ownership and meaningful disaster information access, however, remains underexplored. This project examines that relationship through secondary data analysis across Caribbean countries. Drawing on national gender statistics and disaster databases including EM-DAT and World Bank gender indicators, the project asks whether gender shapes access to climate and disaster information independently of device ownership, and what structural factors may account for variation across countries and demographic groups. Findings will contribute to an emerging framework for understanding digital connectivity beyond device ownership, with implications for gender-responsive disaster risk reduction policy.