On the 10th of October, 2021 the Human Rights Law Network organised a State Meeting on “Women with Disabilities and the Law in Delhi. The meeting was attended by 70 women with disabilities, and was held at the Hotel Portico Sarovar, Nehru Place. The purpose of this meeting was to build an understanding of gender and disability issues, and create legal awareness.
Our founder and executive director Nidhi Goyal, opened and set the context for this meeting. She gave a holistic sense of the violations and violence that women with disabilities face throughout their lives, and how the pandemic and subsequent lockdown exacerbated it – by drawing linkages between several issues including health, education, work, and access. Through the findings of our report – Neglected and Forgotten: Women with Disabilities during the covid crisis in India, she focused on the need to look at these issues from a gendered perspective, and to understand the specific barriers faced by women standing at the intersection of multiple marginalisations.