Empowering Women and Girls with Disabilities

Women and girls with disabilities are a group which many people in the world overlook and marginalize. Canada is working to put systems in place to change this by providing money for research and development of policies which would impact women and girls with disabilities all around the world. DAWN Canada has been working for 30 years to working to aid women and girls with disabilities and collaborated with the Canadian government to create a  “More Than A Footnote: A Research Report on Women and Girls with Disabilities in Canada".  The presentation of this report was the main focus of conversation and discussion at the CSW63 Side Event.
The discussion focused around two main points.
1. The importance of intersectional approaches to policy and data collection with respect to addressing compounding forms of discrimination against women and girls with disabilities.
2.  The higher rates for gender-based violence, particularly childhood abuse and sexual assault, committed against girls, particularly Indigenous/black girls and girls with disabilities.

The first point was addressed by Meenakshi Balasubramanian, from India who provided valuable and comparative data from India's last census. She shared that there was no data that was 100 percent focused on women with disabilities and that not having an intersectional approach to data caused a large group of voices to be missing when policies were being made. She commented on having policies for education and women but not for just women, creating a marginalization of women with disabilities. The issue was also addressed by a women who works with NGO's on the ground in Mongolia. She expressed the concern of having data collection that did not fully reflect the issues that this marginalized group was dealing with. She would love to see a more community upward approach to policy making. A story shared by Anastasia Holoboff from Women Enable International(WEI), provided great context for how some policies that are put in place do not work for every situation.

Due to being short on time, the discussion of the second point was cut short. However, the discussion of education about sexual assault and abuse was brought up as one way in which the address some of the higher rates. Mention of outreach centers that can fully help with both the education and aid.

The floor was then opened to questions. The discussion was one that could have gone on all day. The wealth of knowledge and open dialogue provides a great platform for future discussion and actions for women and girls with disabilities.