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This study aims to identify levels of gender perception specific to disaster management process and gender-related factors among the health workers employed at Çan State Hospital, Turkey.

The study was carried out with a survey form consisting of 41 questions created by researchers with 207 health workers working at Çan State Hospital and by means of face-to-face interview technique. SPSS ver. 19.0 statistics software package was used in the research for analysis of data.

Of the participants, 70.24% had experienced a disaster before; 88.03% reported that women and men were equally affected by disasters and 72.94% reported that women and men were equally affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The majority of the participants (70.29%) reported that the COVID-19 pandemic affected health workers of both genders equally. The health workers who consider that the disaster legislation is gender-sensitive, who have attended any disaster response training and who consider that women are included in the fragile/vulnerable group in disaster response activities have been found out to have significantly higher gender perception scores specific to disaster management process (p < 0.05). Most of the participants stated that both genders were affected equally by the disasters they experienced, which manifests that they adopted an egalitarian approach.

This study revealed the importance of providing disaster training for health workers to improve the gender perceptions. It is of high significance to integrate gender into the disaster trainings.

This study identifies and evaluates health workers' disaster-specific perceptions of gender, and necessary response activities can be performed accordingly.

This study aims to develop a perception scale of gender role in disaster management and examine related factors.

A total of 1,167 individuals were reached in the main trial. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were applied to test the validity of the final scale form, respectively.

The scale was developed as unidimensional with two positive items and 17 negative items. The mean scores of the participants were in the positive perception group. The 19-item model is a reliable and valid instrument for measuring the perception of gender role specific to disaster management.

Determining the perceptions of the people will guide the policies related to gender equity and equality and activities to be carried out in the disaster management field. This tool can be used to raise awareness related to gender perceptions in the disaster preparedness activities.

The “Perception Scale of Gender Role in Disaster Management” which is a reliable and robust tool to determine the perception of gender role specific to the disaster management was developed in this study. This tool can contribute to address the needs and capacities and provide influencive strategy development through gender analysis.