Our Founder and Executive Director, Nidhi Goyal, was a panellist for “Bolstering the Front Line: Grassroots Organisations’ Role in Women’s Economic Empowerment” – an online session for the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (UNCSW) held on March 13, 2024. The session had nine speakers and close to seventy-five participants. Nidhi spoke about the need to critically look at the category of ‘women’ and understand the exclusion of disabled women, which becomes even more necessary at the grassroots since disability is not reported enough. She also spoke about the ramifications of access to education and technology and how lacking it leads to concretising feminisation of poverty. Non-disabled children are prioritised over disabled children, and amongst disabled children, disabled boys and prioritised over disabled girls, further marginalising them. Disability and gender, therefore, are very closely knit together; the existing hierarchies of societies ensure that women with disabilities are more marginalised than women without disabilities and men with disabilities.
She also spoke of the lack of systems and infrastructures for women with disabilities to thrive and live independently. When we leave them out for the cost of exclusion, there is an impact as high as 15% on the economy. Research also shows that 80% of disabled people live in developing areas, mostly in poverty, which fuels a cyclic relationship between lack of access to healthcare and poverty. For instance, the lack of required vaccinations for newborns is directly linked to matters of disability. Added to this, Nidhi also spoke about the importance of keeping in mind other social factors, such as caste, class, economic status, etc., that affect the accessibility of resources for women with disabilities.
Poverty is not a monolithic issue. Data suggests that women worldwide are likely to be excluded from paid labour markets, resulting in a higher unemployment rate and lesser pay than their male counterparts. This phenomenon, also known as the feminisation of poverty, calls for interventions by stakeholders at the grassroots level alongside a deeper understanding of the various intersections of social locations at play, including, as mentioned by Nidhi, the intersections of disabled women.