Women and girls with disabilities often face disproportionately high rates of gender-based violence, sexual abuse, neglect, maltreatment and exploitation. Studies show that women and girls with disabilities are twice as likely to experience gender-based violence compared to women and girls without disabilities. Women with disabilities are often denied reproductive healthcare and at times are even subjected to forced sterilization. When healthcare services are available, they may not be physically accessible for women with varying types of disabilities, or healthcare providers don’t know how to accommodate them.
The exclusion and violence against women and girls with disabilities heavy financial and social consequences. Discrimination against persons with disabilities hinders economic development, limits democracy, and erodes societies. Perhaps because of the challenges they face, women and
girls with disabilities are poised to be leaders within their communities and can greatly contribute to the economic development of their countries.
WODNET is working to empower women with disabilities. In doing so, WODNET is working to reduce the vulnerabilities that women and girls with disabilities face. These
include the following
a) Limited mobility. Limited mobility can result in an inability to flee dangerous situations, as well as an inability to physically access basic services such as food, medical care and shelter that able-bodied individuals can more easily get to. Women with disabilities may be unable to access water from distant boreholes. They may be forced to stay in IDP camps because they cannot travel back to their homes and have no one to assist them.
b) Stigma and discrimination from their families, communities, and service providers. Women and girls with disabilities may be viewed by their families and communities as little more than burdens who cannot contribute to the community and may therefore be at heightened risk for intra-familial verbal and physical abuse. They may be denied access to basic services, isolated from or abandoned by their communities, and be more at risk of danger because they lack family or community protection. Because women and girls with disabilities can be more at risk of sexual violence and rape, those that bear children out of rape must sometimes care for these children on their own with little help from their families/ communities.
c) Unequal access to information. Women and girls who are hearing or sight impaired, who cannot travel to community meetings, or who have been denied access to education due to their disability and/or poverty resulting from their disability, are often excluded from the dissemination of important information.
Campaigns raising awareness about VAWG and services available may not reach women with disabilities, despite their increased risk. This is compounded by the fact that service providers are not sensitive or have the capacity to address various disabilities.
d) Inability to participate in their communities and earn livelihoods. Physical access issues, such as lack of mobility devices and ramps, keep women with disabilities from engaging in community activities as well as meaningful work.
Some are stigmatized as less intelligent or unable to work and are denied access to economic groups and other livelihoods opportunities in which they could support themselves.
e) Denied access to justice. Women and girls with disabilities who have survived violence are often unable to turn to the justice system because of barriers to communication and mobility as well as stigma. Women who have been sexually assaulted face the threat of dual stigma of rape and disability, and many choose not to report crimes against them. Furthermore, there is a strong bias against their credibility in judicial processes in cases of mental or cognitive disability.
f) Denied access to property, land, and livestock. Women and girls with disabilities are more likely to be denied basic resources and otherwise taken advantage of by others in the community who view them as being unable to defend themselves.
g) Lack of access to health care. Women with disabilities who cannot access livelihoods are often unable to afford expensive hospital bills. Hospitals that cater to the needs of individuals with disabilities may be in short supply during and after conflict, or lack the funding to support necessary medical procedures. Further, women and girls with disabilities who have been sexually abused are at a high risk of HIV infection.
