Gender discrimination in a context of disability

Posted by Janice Scheckter on 18 January 2022, 11:20 SAST

Gender perspectives on disability and the disability perspective on the situation of women and girls with disabilities. 

Women with disabilities face significantly more difficulties – in both public and private spheres – in attaining access to adequate housing, health, education, vocational training and employment, and are more likely to be institutionalized.  

Promoting gender equality and the empowerment of women is essential to the achievement of the internationally agreed development goals, including the Millennium Development Goals. Women and girls with disabilities experience double discrimination, which places them at higher risk of gender-based violence, sexual abuse, neglect, maltreatment and exploitation. The global literacy rate is as low as one per cent for women with disabilities, according to a UNDP study. The World Bank reports that every minute more than 30 women are seriously injured or disabled during labour and that those 15-50 million women generally go unnoticed.

ADA recognises Gender equality as both a crosscutting concern and a core issue in all different programmes. Gender mainstreaming and an approach to gender are integrated at all levels of the organisation. This is in line with internationally agreed Action Plans and Declarations such as the Beijing Platform for Action, the Millennium Declaration, and the Monterrey Consensus. 

The goal of Gender equity programme is to ensure mainstreaming of issues of women with disabilities in policies and programmes of political and economic structures/ their agencies, governments and civil society organisations. This is in recognition of the fact that for decades, women in Africa have actively organized and advocated for equality and realization of their political, socio-economic and human rights. The outcome of this very difficult but necessary struggle is that more women are represented and actively participating in political and economic life and more women are economically and socially independent. In addition, more women are engaged in the previously traditional male-dominated professions and careers such as engineering, owners of business, construction, and the science and technology fields. By and large, however, women with disabilities have not been included in campaigns to promote the rights of women on the continent, and as a result, their particular issues have neither been highlighted nor mainstreamed. 

To achieve the above, the ADA has established the Network of African Women with Disabilities (NAWWD). The network has a vision of ensuring an inclusive African society where the rights of women with disabilities are protected, promoted and realised while staying committed, through advocacy, mainstreaming, and alliance building at all levels, to achieve equality, social / legal justice, peace, inclusive development and the elimination of all forms of discrimination for all women with disabilities. 

Sources: United Nations Enable, Division for inclusive social development

Africa Disability Alliance, corporate profile