The floodwater has disappeared from Satkania and Banshkhali. Roads are reopening, markets are slowly filling with customers again, and children are beginning to return to school. To many, the crisis is over.
But for the families I met during a recent visit to these flood-hit communities, the real struggle has only just begun.
Climate disasters do not affect everyone equally. They expose the inequalities that already exist -- between women and men, girls and boys, rich and poor, those with disabilities and those without, and between households with support and those left to cope alone.
The July flash floods in Chittagong were not just an environmental disaster; they were a stark reminder that vulnerability is deeply shaped by gender and intersecting social realities. Homes collapsed, crops were destroyed, roads disappeared under water, and access to healthcare, education, and safe drinking water was severely disrupted. Yet behind these statistics are stories that reveal what disaster truly looks like.
In Ilsha village of Banshkhali, I met Shifa, a 14-year-old girl who dreams of becoming an Army officer. When the flood struck, her family fled with nothing. Returning home, they found their mud house damaged and her schoolbooks buried beneath thick mud.
Her father is undergoing cancer treatment and fears he can no longer afford to keep her in school. The flood also coincided with her menstruation, leaving her without privacy or adequate facilities to manage it safely.
For many, the flood damaged a house. For Shifa, it threatened a future.
Climate disasters interrupt far more than infrastructure. They interrupt education, aspirations, and the life chances of adolescent girls. Every missed examination, every destroyed textbook and every financial setback pushes girls closer to dropping out of school or being married early.
In the Nolua Union of Satkania, Sadia showed me another face of vulnerability. As the head of her household and sole caregiver of her three-year-old child with a disability, she faced the flood entirely alone.
She carried household belongings to safety while caring for her child, managed without menstrual hygiene products by tearing pieces from an old saree, and developed painful skin infections after prolonged exposure to contaminated floodwater. Her husband works abroad but is seriously ill and unable to support the family financially.
Sadia's experience cannot be explained by gender alone. It is the intersection of gender, disability, poverty, and unpaid caregiving that placed her at far greater risk than others around her.
That is the essence of intersectionality. Disasters may strike an entire community, but they do not strike everyone with equal force.
The same pattern emerged in the story of Parvin Akter, a widow raising three daughters on her own. During displacement, one of her adolescent daughters started menstruating without access to sanitary materials or a private place to change.
After returning home, soaring food prices forced impossible choices between buying food, hygiene supplies and school materials. Poverty did not simply make recovery harder; being a female-headed household multiplied those challenges.
Older women faced another layer of exclusion. Shefali Rani Das, aged 60, described being trapped inside her flooded home because she could barely move through the water.
Cooking became impossible, toilets disappeared beneath floodwater, and damaged roads isolated her community. Without nearby emergency shelters or reliable assistance, surviving the flood depended largely on family members who could help her move.
Throughout the visit, one reality surfaced repeatedly but rarely appears in official damage assessments: Disasters dramatically increase women's unpaid care work.
Women cleaned mud-filled homes, searched for water, cooked under impossible conditions, cared for sick children and elderly relatives, repaired damaged houses and tried to restore some sense of normalcy -- all while carrying the emotional burden of holding families together.
Recovery begins long before humanitarian assistance arrives, and much of that recovery rests on invisible, unpaid labour performed by women.
The women and girls I spoke with rarely asked for sympathy. They asked for dignity.
They spoke about inaccessible toilets, the absence of menstrual hygiene materials, damaged schools, skin diseases caused by contaminated water, and the anxiety of not knowing how they would rebuild their lives.
As climate change intensifies, Bangladesh will experience more frequent and severe weather extremes. Whether these hazards become humanitarian disasters depends not only on rainfall or river levels but on how prepared we are to protect those facing multiple and overlapping vulnerabilities.
An intersectional approach must move from policy language to practice. That means prioritising female-headed households, adolescent girls, older persons, persons with disabilities, pregnant and lactating women, and caregivers in disaster preparedness and recovery.
It means designing accessible shelters, ensuring dignified menstrual hygiene management, expanding cash assistance, strengthening psychosocial support, and recognising and reducing women's unpaid care work as part of resilience building.
What gave me some hope in Satkania and Banshkhali were the people. Neighbours rescued one another before formal relief arrived. Families shared food with those who had none. Girls like Shifa still spoke confidently about becoming Army officers, teachers and professionals despite everything they had lost.
They do not need pity. They need policies that see them.
When the next flood comes -- and it will -- the greatest danger will not only be the rising water. It will be our failure to recognize that vulnerability is never one-dimensional, and that building resilience begins by putting those standing in the deepest water at the centre of our response.
Rowshon Akhter Urmee is a Gender Justice & Social Inclusion Specialist, Oxfam in Bangladesh.