Reuters in Meunasah Mesjid – Nestled between steep, forested hills and a white sandy beach, Meunasah Mesjid is one of Aceh's new bachelor villages after the December 26 tsunami, which killed a disproportionate number of women and children.

The second-biggest tsunami recorded, triggered by the strongest earthquake in 45 years, killed nine out of 10 people in this picturesque village on Aceh's north coast, a mere 150km from the quake's epicentre. Only 161 of Meunasah Mesjid's 1,110 people survived – just 45 of them are women.

People now live in tents pitched amid twisted cars, endless piles of rubble and ruined paddy fields, utterly dependent on distributions of food, water and other aid.

"A lot of the men were up in the hills cutting meranti trees for logs. Others were in the paddy fields and some men work in the city," said the village's recovery co-ordinator, Mulia, explaining why more men than women survived. Some men were also out fishing at sea and many of them survived as the wave passed under their boats.

In some villages, the disaster killed up to four times as many women as men, international aid group Oxfam said after a survey of villages. Its findings were similar in India and Sri Lanka.

"In some villages it now appears that up to 80 per cent of those killed were women," Becky Buell, Oxfam's policy director, said in the report released on March 26. "We are already hearing about rapes, harassment and forced early marriages," she said.

A group of women gathered at lunchtime in the community hall now used as the tsunami recovery centre, said such incidents had not happened in Meunasah Mesjid. But single, divorced and widowed women acknowledged they were being pressured to marry.

"I get a lot of pressure to marry and have children, but I haven't found my soulmate yet," said Omrahwati, 32. "There's pressure," said Elliyana, 19. "I want to marry an Acehnese. There's a lot of choices now, so that's good."

The tsunami took an appalling toll on children, many of whom were home on a Sunday morning with their mothers. Mulia said that in Meunasah only eight children between the ages of two and nine survived, along with four teenagers.

Many women and young children, struggling to stay afloat or on their feet, simply tired and drowned when the tsunami struck at speeds of 45km/h.

Men may face problems of their own as they take on unfamiliar household tasks or look after their families. Some could become willing recruits for Acehnese separatist rebels hiding in the hills.