Gender Bias in Hurricane Naming

Hurricane Katrina killed over 1,300 people and caused $125 billion in damage,

yet we gave it a woman's name without questioning why. For decades, every single hurricane

had a female name. Back in 1953, the U.S. Weather Bureau decided storms needed names

instead of coordinates because names are easier to remember and communicate. But they only used

women's names, which reinforced the idea that destructive forces of nature were inherently

feminine. In the 1970s, women's rights advocates called this out as blatantly sexist.

They argued we were literally associating devastation with being female. So in 1979,

they finally changed the system to alternate between male and female names. Now we use predetermined