Founder and Executive Director Nidhi Goyal was invited as a storyteller for 30 for 2030’s online event titled ‘Am I a Feminist? Addressing The Elephant In The Room’ by UN Women Asia Pacific on 25 November 2022.
The event was carried out in the format of a human library where Nidhi joined other storytellers in talking about her personal and professional community-based journey to highlight the voices of women with disabilities and the intersectional challenges faced by people who are gender-marginalised as well as disabled.
Nidhi’s story, drawing from her own life experiences, spotlighted accessibility barriers in education — how the onus was on her if she wanted to be in mainstream classes — as well as the societal and behavioural exclusions in classrooms that isolated and made her the “other”. She also spoke about entering the feminist movement and exploring belonging within it, working with disabled women’s experiences of violence and its effects, as well as about how her work around the intersections of sexuality and disability was received.
An important link that was made in this session was also about leadership — being a disabled leader has its own challenges, because while women and young leaders have a difficult time, being a young disabled woman leader is a whole different journey altogether.