Articles – No Means No

Combating violence against women with disabilities: Our recommendations

During the Belgian national awareness raising conference “Combating violence against women: the role of women with disabilities” on 8 October 2021, the participants made the following demands to fight more effectively against violence against women and girls with disabilities.

We believe that no decision concerning them should be taken without first letting women with disabilities speak up. This is fundamental if decisions are to be truly adequate to their realities and needs.

Furthermore, it is important to hear what they have to say directly, without a filter, without their parents or carers speaking for them.

General approach against discrimination, stereotypes and exclusion

To question and make more inclusive the current education system, in particular schools, sports associations, youth movements, etc., so that, from the earliest age, children with all kinds of abilities evolve together.
Deconstruct the notion of disability so that it is not seen as a shortcoming, but as a potential, a carrier of different experiences, practices and needs, and see it through the prism of a wider system of interdependence.
Promote positive images of people with disabilities, without infantilisation or victimisation – people with disabilities have particular skills and intelligences that enrich and complement mainstream ways of seeing.
Deconstruct the link between sexism and ableism so that women with disabilities are perceived and treated as full human beings and are no longer reduced to their disability.
Support more research in disability studies and intersectional gender/disability analysis; in particular, integrate disability in the Master’s degree in gender and create a research centre dedicated to disability studies.
Conduct awareness campaigns, including on social media, to promote inclusion and respect for diversity and combat prejudice and stereotypes.
Raise awareness and empower journalists and the media on the importance of making visible the diversity of women with disabilities, in particular by using non-stereotypical terms and images. Beware of reductive designations, as some deaf women for example do not recognise themselves under the disability label (“women with disabilities and/or deaf”).
Increase the active participation of women with disabilities in the media and the cultural sector, in all functions and at all decision-making levels.
Raise awareness and promote cultural productions by women with disabilities, for example by organising an art festival by women with disabilities for a diverse audience.
Bring women with disabilities out of the shadows and create media and cultural content that represents them as full human beings, not reduced to their disability, powerful and capable of action.
Identify and overcome all disabling aspects of society, especially by slowing down the functioning of society to make it more humane for all.
All sectors and levels of society must set an example of inclusion, using communication channels accessible to all and aiming at dialogue and mutual understanding.

Empowering women with disabilities

Make every effort to ensure the right to independent living, including quality assistance.
Promote the participation of women with disabilities in the regular labour market and in adequately paid positions.
Use positive action to promote the employment of women with disabilities.
Make jobs accessible, especially in the care and education sectors.
Remunerating the work of women with disabilities, which until now has been done on a voluntary basis.
Create an autonomy allowance for all women with disabilities, regardless of their lifestyle, including living with a partner, to reduce their financial dependence.
Ensure full accessibility of all public spaces, including social networks, to enable women with disabilities to meet freely, build up various networks and affiliations and participate fully in the life of the city.
To make visible and enhance the capacity to act of women with disabilities in order to deconstruct stereotypes and encourage them to feel capable and legitimate to speak, act and defend their rights and interests.
Valuing the expertise of women with disabilities in all fields, not just disability.
Create opportunities for everyone to come out of silence and be heard, which implies full accessibility and shared means of communication. At the same time, specific and spaces in chosen mixity are needed where women with disabilities can speak and be heard.
Create different workshops and playful tools to free the speech and co-construct the knowledge of women with disabilities.
In any communication addressed to women with disabilities, ensure that the message is short, accessible and focused on the concrete contribution of the information for women with disabilities. Encourage the use of platforms preferred by women with disabilities, for example Instagram.
Train women with disabilities to create their own content and media so that they can speak for themselves and show their creativity and opinions.
Supporting women with disabilities to form a French speaking association, like the Persephone association in Flanders.
Specifically support small associations of women with disabilities facing additional discrimination and oppression (e.g. racism, hetero/cis/monosexism, classism) so that they can bring their intersectional analysis to all sectors of society.

Develop preventive skills for women with disabilities

Integrate primary prevention education and education on relationships, emotional and sexual life (EVRAS) in all curricula and schools and from an early age, with particular attention to the notions of consent, personal limits and prevention and resistance strategies, and in particular for children and young people in need of assistance involving physical contact.
Fund feminist self-defence, its accessibility and promotion for all women and girls with disabilities. Increase the number of training courses everywhere and for everyone, including through local support from cities and municipalities, or even the creation of a certificate and an obligation to develop feminist self-defence in every sector (e.g. in special schools).
Organise such training for women with disabilities living in institutions. Special attention should be paid to places where women with disabilities are likely to live, such as shelters, psychiatric institutions and organisations working in the field of migration.
Organise, make visible and promote these trainings so that women with disabilities who are not connected to organisations in the disability sector have access to them. For promotion, information tools should be distributed to the places where women with disabilities go, for example general practitioners, ONE offices, municipalities, CPAS, mutual benefit societies, home care or family support services, religious organisations, their children’s schools. It should be noted that communication must be visible to all, as these actors are not necessarily aware of the disability of the women concerned. Some women are reluctant to talk to these bodies about their disability, for fear of being considered unfit as a parent and losing custody of their children.
Create accessible and non-infantilizing tools to explain violence, prevention strategies and where to find help. These tools should address all forms of violence, whether in relationships, in the family, in care relationships, in the public space, etc. They should be produced in different accessible formats and be accessible to all. They should be produced in a variety of accessible formats, including Easy-to-Read and Understand, Belgian French Sign Language, Braille and audio description.
Create accessible tools for victim support, including for non-professionals.
Encourage networking between the various services involved in preventing violence and caring for victims, including at the municipal level.

Making private spaces safer

Deconstruct the idea of the protective family, as this representation invisibilises and facilitates violence, and promote the message that the family space is subject to the law.
Establish consent as the basis for all interaction between caregivers and the cared for and give caregivers the means to let go of the organisation of the daily life of women and girls with disabilities.
Organise and promote, from an early age, training for the families and social environment of children with disabilities on respectful and empowering ways to help and support the child.
Create places where families of women with disabilities can talk and receive support so that they are not left alone with their difficulties.
Improve support for families of women with disabilities to reduce the stress of family carers.

Preventing violence in the disability sector

Evaluate and reform specialised institutions and services (specialised education, non-mixed living, working and leisure facilities for people with disabilities) from top to bottom in order to avoid the isolation that encourages violence.
Establish consent as the basis for all interaction between professionals and beneficiaries (touching, movement, activities, etc.) and give professionals the means to let go of the organisation of the daily life of women and girls with disabilities.
Improve the working conditions of professionals in the disability sector to free up the time needed to operate on a consent basis.
Train professionals, including the medical profession, to combat ableism and develop respectful and empowering protocols, attitudes and practices.
Train professionals in specialised education, including specialised PMS centres, on issues of violence, primary prevention and care of victims, including available services and their accessibility.
Expand the range of in-service training for professionals in the disability sector with specific training on violence prevention and reduce overload so that professionals have time to attend such training.
Include in the initial training of professionals in the disability sector knowledge and know-how about violence, its prevention and support for victims.
To fight the neoliberal vision in the sector of adapted work companies in order to preserve and enlarge spaces of action for the people working there.
To create a network for the exchange of information and good practice in assistance, accessible to professionals and users.
Involve professions such as home helpers and carers in the prevention of violence, including providing them with the necessary information to act when they witness violence against women with disabilities.
Centralise and make accessible information on initiatives to combat violence in order to avoid wasting resources on reinventing the wheel.
Establish the obligation in each specific service for people with disabilities to set up a democratic process to elect a representative among the users who will identify the needs and wishes of women and communicate them to the organisation.
To open the way to and recognise the expertise of those concerned through peer education, peer counselling and awareness raising/training of professionals by women with disabilities (peer-to-pro).

Increase the accessibility of the anti-violence sector

Avoid the creation of specific support services for women with disabilities – they should be able to go to any anti-violence service and be well received and supported.
Create accessibility directories for these services so that women with disabilities do not have to do the research themselves and can access the services directly when needed.
Promote particularly accessible anti-violence services.
Create an accessibility label with different models according to the type of accessibility to facilitate communication and orientation.
Visibly displaying the accessibility information of the service on all communication materials and creating accessible communication materials (FALC, LSFB, audio description…).
Increase the accessibility of the domestic violence helpline and its chat room to 24/7.
Make all anti-violence services financially accessible because women with disabilities are more often in poverty and paying services are a major barrier for them.
Include and make visible women with disabilities in campaigns that fight against violence against women.
Train professionals, through initial and ongoing training, to deconstruct their false representations of disability and to welcome and communicate with women with disabilities in a correct manner, including addressing the woman concerned and not the assistant or interpreter; ideally, these skills should be recognised by a certificate.
Pave the way to the expertise of the women concerned through peer education, peer counselling and awareness raising/training of professionals by women with disabilities (peer-to-pro). It is important that these contributions of women with disabilities are valued and paid for.
Develop peer support in support services to accompany women with disabilities, including in discussion groups for victims of violence. In peer support, it is important to ensure the independence of the peer support workers from the host organisation so that they do not reproduce oppressive values, attitudes or practices.
Introduce support services in institutions and other services of the disability sector to professionals and users.
Create spaces for meetings, exchange of experiences and practices and tools between professionals from the disability sector and the anti-violence sector.
Include disability organisations in the mailing lists for campaigns, posters, brochures etc. of the anti-violence services.
Disseminate information from the disability sector, for example about activities, in the anti-violence services.
Develop interpretation in Belgian-French sign language, train interpreters in correct and respectful translation in the context of violence, create a fund to finance interpretation in LSFB for deaf women victims of violence.
Strengthen and fund accessible transport and communication about anti-violence services, as well as the creation of local branches of anti-violence services in all regions, and particularly in rural areas, to overcome the isolation of women with disabilities.
Develop transformative work with perpetrators, not only through individualised therapeutic approaches. Services working with perpetrators must also take into account perpetrators with disabilities and become accessible and inclusive.

Making the police and justice system more accessible

Generalise the use of FALC in police and justice communications (websites, letters, etc.).
Develop specific initial and ongoing training for police officers and justice professionals to improve the treatment of women with disabilities who are victims of violence.
Identify and communicate on referral (and trained) persons on disability and violence in all police areas and judicial districts.
Inform, raise awareness and train lawyers on gender, disability and violence issues.
Extend the statute of limitations for the different forms of violence that affect women in a specific or disproportionate way in order to give women time to prepare for a complaint and legal proceedings.

Make the feminist movement more inclusive

Remain vigilant for absent women and increase efforts to enable their full participation.
Invite women with disabilities and their organisations to participate in networks, mobilisations etc. and respect their right to speak for themselves.
Organise activities, meetings, festivals etc. in an accessible way and be sensitive to the specific needs of women.
Improve networking with and between feminist associations, often small, that represent marginalised women (migrant, disabled, LGBTQI+…)
Develop a concrete and practical intersectional approach by working in other languages than French and Dutch and by collaborating with small associations of women with a migrant background that can act as cultural mediators.
Disseminate information from the disability sector in feminist networks.

Another important topic was also discussed but not pursued due to lack of time:

Women with disabilities reported a lot of institutional and intrapersonal violence in health services. This topic should be explored in order to develop an awareness-raising and preventive training programme for (para)medical professionals. Other protective factors that should be strengthened are the principle of women’s self-determination in health matters, the financial accessibility of health services for women with disabilities, the consultation of experts in the field in the organisation of health services, and networking and support work with parents.

Speech by Kasja Żedlycka

Katarzyna Żedlycka (Autonomia) gave the following speech at the webinar “Ending violence against women with disabilities in the European Union” organised by the European Disability Forum on 24 November 2020.

II am a woman with a disability. I am also a Wendo trainer – Wendo is a feminist self-defence and assertiveness training for women and girls. I teach women with disabilities how to recognize violence and react to it. From my meetings with women with disabilities I can tell that we have a collective experience of physical, psychological, economical and sexual violence. We are touched without our consent. We are treated as children. It is assumed we do not have sexual desire, but we experience sexual harassment and violence. Most of our offenders are not punished.

Society teaches us to be silent. When we are in danger we are afraid to yell. In a meeting with women with intellectual disabilities we were talking about what to do when someone touches us without consent on a bus. One option is to yell. This will bring attention of the passengers. After the meeting one carer came to me. She said: do not teach them to yell, because people will think they are mentally ill.

In Poland we do not get sex education. We are not taught body awareness. Often we do not know, when and how to set boundaries. And when behaviour is violence or harassment.

Women with disabilities complain that others touch their wheelchairs and their white sticks without permission. Therefore, they learn how to use these devices for self-defence. The crutches or the wheelchair become their defence tools.

From January 2020, Autonomia Foundation, Garance and organisations from Belgium, France and Germany have been carrying out a project for women with disabilities with the name “No means no”. We organise empowerment workshops. We also collect their success stories. Women with disabilities tell us how they reacted to violence. The success stories will be included in a safety guide. The aim of the guide is to help other women learn how to react and recall their own stories.

In my experience, it is very important for trainers and women with disabilities to share their experiences, support each other and learn to recognise and respond to violence.

Finally, I would like to stress that we must remember that most of the work must be done by men. They are 95% of the offenders. There are also men with disabilities among them. Violence prevention means educating men, and men should take resposibility for changing harmful assumptions around sexual violence.

Violence against women with disabilities in France

The yearly French survey Cadre de vie et sécurité (Living conditions and safety) of the French government highlights that people with disabilities (between 18 and 64 years) are more often confronted with all kinds of violence than able-bodied people. 7.3% of people with disabilities have experienced physical or sexual violence in the 24 months preceding the survey, compared to 5.1% of the general population. They also experience more threats outside of the household (+ 3.3 points) and insults (+4.2 points). Disability therefore is a major factor in victimisation rates.

This divergence is even more pronounced when it comes to women with disabilities (WWD). 9% of them have experienced physical and/or sexual violence, compared to 5.8% of able-bodied women. Over a two-year period, 4.0% of WWD experience sexual violence, a rate that is at 1.7% for able-bodied women. WWD are also more often exposed to verbal violence, with 18.1% having experienced insults and 8.2% threats. When controled for other variables, such as age or household composition, victimisation risk increases even more for WWD, by 4.8 percentage points for physical and/or sexual violence, 4.6 for threats and 6.7 for insults respectively.

Not only do people with disabilities experience violence more often, they also report a more traumatising impact on average than the general population. For example, they report more psychological impacts that disturb their daily functioning, including their professional functioning. This can be explained by more multiple victimisations and more serious forms of violence, which lead to more frequent broken bones and other injuries, as well as to more frequent medical care. Again, WWD are concerned more often compared to men with disabilities.

Violence against people with disabilities takes place more often in their neighbourhood than for the general population. They experience assault in their home or building two times more often, which is even more so the case for physical and sexual violence. They are also more often confronted with more than one attacker.

And the perpetrators ? The majority are adult men who act on their own, even if for people with disabilities, female perpetrators are more frequent than for the general population. This can be explained by the over-representation of women among professional and family caregivers. People with disabilities report more often than able-bodied people that they know the perpetrator intimately or superficially, no matter if the violence occurs in their homes or in public space. For example, 68% of people with disabilities having experienced threats, 61% having experienced physical violence and 47% having been insulted respectively knew their attacker.

One in four people with disabilities having experienced violence or theft has filed a report with the police, while for the general population, this proportion is lower with one in five. This is particularly true in case of physical or sexual violence. The police report statistics are an additional source of information for the survey. Men with disabilities use police services more often than women with disabilities, except for sexual violence and offenses against human dignity (a series of offences including human trafficking, pimping, prostitution of minors and exploitation of begging, among others). Sexual violence concerns a disproportional number of young women between 15 and 29, as well as people with disabilities that are not physical. However, the other types of infractions reported to the police concern a majority of victims with physical disabilities.

Given these facts, it is not surprising that more people with disabilities declare to feel unsafe than the general population. 17% of people with disabilities feel unsafe in their village or neighbourhood often or from time to time, which leads 16% to limiting their mobility due to safety concerns, compared to 11% and 9% respectively for the general population. People with disabilities also feel more often unsafe at home (14%). These differences are explained by the higher victimisation rates, as well as in differences of other characteristics (age, living conditions).

The survey measured disability through a (self-)definition of respondents for a household, either by ticking “disabled” or “experiencing difficulties in daily life functioning”. For methodological reasons, people with disabilities are under-represented in the survey (8% of the sample), because the survey has not been made accessible, nor has assistance been provided for filling in the questionnaire. In addition, people living in institutions were excluded, with concerns a disproportionate number of people with disabilities. Therefore, the numbers have to be interpreted with caution, as they only reflect the tip of the iceberg of violence.

Left behind ? Women with disabilities during COVID-19

The European Disability Forum organised on 19 June 2020 a webinar of the same title to examine how the current pandemic impacts the 60 million women and girls with disabilities in Europe. The panel of speakers included representatives of EDF’s Women’s Committee, the European Women’s Lobby (EWL), the European Commission, the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE), UN Women and the Spanish women’s foundation CERMI. All agreed that due to the intersection of sexism and ableism, women with disabilities are left out in efforts to reduce the negative impact of the pandemic on particularly vulnerable populations. In general, neither the disability movement nor the women’s movement advocate for their rights as a priority, and this is not different in times of crisis.

Luisa Bosisio, an Italian member of EDF’s board and the Women’s Committee, criticised that public authorities did not consult with disability organisations when determining countermeasures to the pandemic, and therefore women with disabilities were affected especially hard. In Italy, the majority of institution-dwelling people with disabilities are women, and they were disproportionately hit by the lockdown that translated into severe isolation. Personal assistance having been declared a non-essential service, women with disabilities and mothers with children with disabilities were left without assistance. When the increase in intimate partner violence pushed the authorities to communicate about victim support, no information was available in accessible formats, again leaving women with disabilities, who are more at risk of violence, in isolation and without help. And the general difficult access to health services and reproductive rights was even more challenging for women with disabilities, jeopardising their access to birth control, abortion, pregnancy care and cancer prevention.

The secretary-general of the EWL, Joanna Maycock, reminded the audience of the socio-economic and mental and physical health impacts of the pandemic response and the predicted economic recession. Although the awareness of violence against women and girls has increased during the lockdown, we are looking towards a difficult period where our societies may go backwards on gender equality. The 2008 economic crisis has taught us that cutting back public expenditure hits women and girls with disabilities hardest, due to a decrease in access to services. Therefore, the EWL calls for a new care deal that invests in care structures, quality jobs in the care sector and better access for all.

Elizabeth White, policy officer at the gender equality unit of the European Commission, underlined that the recently adopted Gender Equality Strategy can play an important role in mitigating the pandemic’s impact on women with disabilities. It focuses on freedom from violence and harmful stereotypes, equal opportunities at work and women’s participation in decision making and calls on member states to increase their efforts in the current situation. Other measures that may be used to defend the rights of women with disabilities are the measures for transparency on equality in the labour market, the work-life balance directive and research on gender-based violence with an intersectional approach. The Commission also calls for the EU’s accession to the Istanbul Convention and will integrate a gender perspective in the forthcoming Disability Strategy.

EIGE was represented by the researcher Marre Karu. She said that as in all issues, women with disabilities are disproportionately impacted and discriminated against during the current pandemic. EIGE will publish the gender equality index, based on 2018 data, that includes a few disability statistics. The data shows that across Europe, women with disabilities suffer from the poorest health while having the highest level of unmet medical needs of all populations. This will probably have been exacerbated during the pandemic. Women with disabilities have a 35% risk of poverty. Their main reason for not participating in the labour market is their care work, while for their male counterparts it is their disability. The change in work forms during the lockdown may make employment more accessible in the future, but data is needed to plan for mitigating the long-term impact of the pandemic by integrating disability indicators into general socio-economic indicators.

A global perspective on the situation of women with disabilities came from Monjurul Kabir, senior advisor on gender equality and disability inclusion at UN Women. It is still early to conclude on the extent of the pandemic’s impact on women with disabilities, but several consequences are already known. Firstly, people with disabilities lost their jobs disproportionally often and had less access to new employment. Secondly, parents with disabilities, and even more so mothers with disabilities, had to carry the burden of family care, which was exacerbated if their children also have a disability. And finally, violence at home and in institutional settings has increased. Accessing essential services has become a huge challenge for women with disabilities. For example, helplines are often not accessible although they are technology-driven services. Refugees and migrant workers, who also include women with disabilities, can neither return to their country of origin nor access services in their host country and face particular challenges. The global pandemic has a severe impact on national economies, and governments have to review their budgets. Gender equality and disability inclusion are again the poor parents when it comes to distributing resources. In the long-term, the pandemic will lead to cuts in public services, especially at the local level that is often not included in national planning processes, further endangering the rights of women with disabilities.

In terms of good practices, Isabel Caballero, coordinator of the Spanish CERMI Women’s foundation, presented their work with women with disabilities during the pandemic. Spain having been hit particularly hard by covid-19, a huge societal debate is ongoing. Of the 27 000 covid-related deaths registered until June, two thirds occurred in care homes for seniors and people with disabilities. Official statistics indicate that at least 6% of femicides concern women with disabilities, but the proportion is probably higher because disability status is not registered systematically. The lockdown caused an increased demand on specific services for women with disabilities. CERMI facilitated access to information and resources on violence against women and girls, including a service for deaf women provided by the Spanish Federation of Deaf People. They also organised weekly online meeting spaces (No estás sola – you are not alone) for women with disabilities to talk about their experiences with the lockdown. An average of 200 women from Spain and Latin America joined the conversation on health, care management, gender-based violence, access to work and the role of women with disabilities in the reconstruction process. The foundation also designed research on violence against women with disabilities and published a new report on their right to health. In all these endeavours, they worked with the National Council for the participation of women with disabilities.

The subsequent discussion with the audience identified specific challenges for women with disabilities living in rural areas and having less access to new media and the different needs of women living in institutions and community-dwelling women. It also allowed the speakers to share their ideas on how to push the women’s movement towards taking women with disabilities better into account. Alliances between disability and women’s organisations, spaces for meeting and exchanging experiences and identifying people bringing both agendas together are very important. But most importantly, women’s organisations need to become more inclusive, just as disability organisations should take gender into consideration transversally.

Promoting WWD’s rights during the covid crisis

The International Disability Alliance organised a webinar on promoting the rights of women with disabilities (WWD) during the covid crisis on 8 April, in collaboration with the European Disability Forum. To not lose traction in advocacy for the rights of women with disabilities, IDA selected speakers among women with disabilities who were scheduled to speak at the UN Committee of the Status of Women that was cancelled due to the pandemic. It was an interesting dialogue of voices of women with disabilities from all corners of the world.

Barriers

Villany Remengesau (Pacific Disability Forum) presented a regional perspective from the Pacific. Critical information on sanitary precautions and available services was largely inaccessible through the use of technical and medical vocabulary in public service announcements. As women with disabilities often are concentrated in poor, overcrowded areas, their living conditions exacerbate their vulnerability. However, stigma and ableist attitudes are the biggest barriers to the rights of women with disabilities.

Ekaete Judith Umoh (African Disability Forum) highlighted the systemic and structural barriers, i.e. negative cultural beliefs and patriarchy, that hamper the rights of women with disabilities and let governments and the women’s movement neglect the issues and needs of women with disabilities. Except for sign language interpretation on screen in some countries, there has been no action towards people with disabilities at all during the current crisis. None of the covid assessment and treatment centres are accessible, as is food package distribution, in particular for single mothers with disabilities who cannot leave the house. While women’s organisations published statements on gender inequality and violence against women during the pandemic, they left out the specific situation of women with disabilities.

From the Indigenous People with Disabilities Global Network‘s perspective, represented by Pratima Gurung,disability is not on the political agenda during the covid-19 crisis. The basic needs of indigenous women with disabilities, like access to information in sign language or their native language are seldom acknowledged or met. She underlined that women with disabilities are a heterogenous group and they and their allies needed to accept that and adopt an approach that is at once sensitive to gender, disability and culture. Tokenism prevails in the women’s movement and the disability movement where women with disabilities are not included, their voices are not heard and they are not allowed to take decisions that impact them directly.

Yeni Rosa Damayanti (TCI Asia) spoke on the specific situation of women with psychosocial disabilities. In many countries, they do not have legal capacity and are imprisoned in mental institutions. Women with psychosocial disabilities are often automatically put under (informal) guardianship and institutionalised without their consent, sometimes for life. The living conditions are prison-like, and forced contraception and sterilisation and sexual violence are frequent without any complaint mecanism available to the women. During the covid crisis, social care institutions, which are considered non-medical facilities, function like corona petri dishes, with 30 women living on one ward, bad sanitation and nutrition, no soap, no prevention measures in contact with staff and no information because they are considered unable to think. Of course, they do not have access to the media or internet either. If they are released because their institution closes due to covid, they have no place to go. However, it remains hard to raise this issue, even within the women’s and disability movements. In South East Asia, WWD groups are still considered as others who need help, not as fellow activists, and are not invited to gender training that is the base for today’s women’s NGOs. And in the disability movement, the issue of patriarchy is seldom raised. For example, domestic violence perpetrated by men with disabilities is erased to not disturb the image of people with disabilities as only victims of injustice. Disability organisations also do not invite women’s organisations to events. It is urgent to bring the two movements together.

Strategies

Rosario Galarza (Focal Point of the Economic Commission for the Latin American and the Caribbean) recommended strategies for humanitarian aid actors to overcome the double exclusion of women with disabilities and to develop their leadership capacities. Firstly, a collaboration of states, humanitarian aid actors and WWD organisations will improve the inclusion of women with disabilities in emergency response needs. Secondly, WWD organisations need more support for capacity building to contribute their expertise in humanitarian issues. And thirdly, humanitarian actors need to recruit women with disabilities as volunteers and staff to ensure representativity in the field. The covid crisis has made it clear that it is necessary to include women with disabilities from the beginning of any action, and not in the end, as an add-on.

Pirkko Mahlamäki (European Disability Forum) presents as a good practice how the EDF collaborates with the European Women’s Lobby on the follow-up on the UN Convention Against All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. In Finland, her lobbying on the lack of accessible shelter places led to a first audit, but making services for women victims of violence accessible remains an ongoing effort. Concerning the covid crisis, personal assistants for people with disabilities should be included in the list of essential services so that they are allowed to work during lockdowns. In many instances, cases of rationing of care and ventilators on the basis of ability have been reported, and people with disabilities often are not tested, and, once deceased, are not included in the corona statistics.Other ideas for strategies for promoting the rights of women with disabilities came from Rupsa Mallik (CREA) who invited participants to challenge the language of inclusion and focus their efforts on developing the leadership of women with disabilities, as well as policy documents on these issues published by EDF and Women Enabled International that can be used as advocacy tools.