Disabled women organize worldwide

Off Our Backs, Jan/Feb 2003 by Hershey, Laura

women and disability

This article highlights some of the organizing and advocacy activities of women with disabilities around the world. The women quoted in this piece were active at the 1995 NGO Forum on Women in Beijing, China; at the 1996 International Leadership Forum for Women with Disabilities in Bethesda, Maryland; and at the 2001 Society for Disability Studies conference in Winnipeg, Canada. (Robin Stephens contributed to the research in this article.)

"In South Korea, women with disabilities are hiding in their houses. So very few women with disabilities talk to each other. It's a bad situation. Also, there are many committees, many meetings, many institutes to support disabled persons in South Korea, but all the leaders are men. That is our situation. So we don't think of ourselves as leaders." So said Kim Mi Yeon, a young activist from Seoul. But that situation is starting to change, she added with justifiable pride: "The movement of women with disabilities in South Korea is beginning."

Kim's words describe disabled women's predicament and potential, not just in her country, but around the world. Globally, women with disabilities are some of the most oppressed members of many societies. With less access to education, jobs, power, community support, and choices than almost anyone, disabled women often live in poverty and isolation.

Disabled women and girls almost always face a double dose of discrimination, shaped by the particular culture in which they live. "A disabled boy is still more acceptable than a disabled girl," says Indian disability advocate and researcher Anita Ghai. "If a poor family has a disabled son, they will do their best to give him a decent living. Whereas when it comes to girls, they say, "Why should we do anything?"

Yet during the past decade, women with disabilities have been organizing and advocating on their own behalf more than ever before. On every continent, new leaders have emerged to oppose double discrimination based on sex and disability. Whether by working within existing disability groups to form "women's wings," or by creating brand new women's organizations from the grassroots up, determined activists are bringing a gender perspective to the international disability-rights movement.

Many of these leaders traveled to Beijing, China, in August 1995 to participate in the Fourth NonGovernmental Organizations (NGO) Forum on Women. I went to Beijing eager to see how far disabled women had come since 1985, when the last NGO Forum took place in Nairobi, Kenya. As in Nairobi, we constituted a small but visible minority at the Forum in Beijing. Out of the twentyto thirty-thousand attendees, the "disability contingent" numbered perhaps two hundred. It was exhilarating to learn that despite continuing oppression, and in some cases greatly increased hardships, women with disabilities throughout the world have made substantial efforts to improve their status-and sometimes succeeded.

During two subsequent gatherings-the 1996 International Leadership Forum for Women with Disabilities, and the 2001 Society for

Disability Studies conference-I saw further evidence of disabled women's determined activism.

All of these campaigns have succeeded in the sense of creating opportunities for women with disabilities to meet each other, nurture their own self-respect and pride, develop agendas for change, and look toward the future. The South Korean disabled women's group, for example, formed in 1994 by just three women. It quickly grew to twenty-five active members. One key project was a survey of Korean disabled women. Kim reports that among other problems, the survey identified barriers to education as a major issue for women with disabilities: "Half of them cannot receive education beyond middle school-no high school or graduate university education. Society is not integrated, so some people, especially [disabled women], if they went to education, they went to a special school that is isolated from the normal social situation."

Other efforts around the world have yielded concrete results, even helped shape public policy. In Nepal, the National Federation for the Disabled elected a woman, Sushila Pauden, as Secretary General. Pauden also founded the Nepal Disabled Women's Society, which successfully lobbied for progressive amendments to the Disabled Protection Act of 1981.

In other countries, too, women with disabilities seek opportunities to influence government policy. Economic growth has a major impact on disabled women's lives, so advocates in Malaysia have concentrated on development issues. "Every five years we have a development plan for the country," says Bathmavathi Krishnan, Secretary of the Malaysian Spinal Injuries Association (MASIA). The development plan outlines implementation strategies and budgets for development programs. The sixth plan included, for the first time, a chapter called "Women and Family." Krishnan says, "That was a big step in the government acknowledgement that women have been left behind and they need to be included in the economic development of the country. We are going to start this [disabled] women's group and we want to be incorporated into all women's programs that have been planned. We have some very good allies ... and people we've talked to are receptive. We are pleased that we are going to have a good start." Malaysia's disability rights movement is benefiting from the leadership of a generation of welleducated disabled women.