Give women with disabilities a chance 

It is well known that women in developing economies have fewer educational and employment opportunities than their male counterparts, leading to higher rates of poverty. In Ghana, for example, men have higher employment rates and incomes than women, and are less likely to be engaged in vulnerable jobs. 

There are more than one billion people living with disabilities worldwide, some 80 percent of whom reside in developing countries. While there are many models for measuring disability, some conclusions are indisputable: disability is more prevalent among women (19 percent) than men (12 percent); people with disabilities face high barriers to education and employment, leading to higher rates of lifelong poverty; and outcomes for women with disabilities are even worse than those for their male counterparts.

Ghana’s experience is a case in point. Women are disproportionately represented among the eight percent of the population who face functional limitations related to sight, hearing, mobility, cognition, self-care, and/or communication. 

These poor outcomes partly reflect social biases. Expectations of the capabilities of people with disabilities tend to be low, so households are often unwilling to spend limited resources on educating and training family members with disabilities, and employers tend to be reluctant to hire them. Since women and girls are more often underestimated than men and boys – nearly 90 percent of people worldwide hold fundamental biases against women – they are more likely to be left behind. 

Though legal protections for people with disabilities are in place,  they have been insufficient to counteract entrenched biases. A key reason may well be the lack of comprehensive data on disability-related issues, particularly in Africa. 

The first step toward addressing discrimination against persons (especially women) with disabilities is thus to ensure adequate collection of relevant information, especially labour-market data, not least by emphasising more inclusive sampling. This would facilitate disability-disaggregated research and enable robust evidence-based policymaking. 

Strengthening disability laws requires the use of sufficiently precise language – and implementation of supportive policies – to ensure that people can take advantage of the opportunities to which their right is guaranteed. For example, Ghana’s Persons with Disability Act 715 guarantees persons with disabilities a free education, but fails to clarify until which level, let alone establish relevant supportive structures. So is access to quality employment. But here, too, laws in many countries – including Ghana – are lacking. 

But economic empowerment is just the beginning. Women with disabilities in Ghana and elsewhere grapple with reduced access to health care and higher risks of sexual exploitation. Policymakers must, therefore, devise laws ensuring that all people have equal access to health care and other social services, including domestic-violence shelters. 

All such efforts must recognise and account for the diverse challenges faced by people with different kinds of disabilities, as well as the reality that women face even greater discrimination than men. Furthermore, organisations working to protect persons with disabilities must design programmes tailored for different groups. And relevant NGOs should promote participatory approaches to the development of interventions aimed at supporting vulnerable groups. 

But all the policies and programmes in the world cannot ensure full social and economic inclusion for people with disabilities. Campaigns are also needed to reduce the social stigma that contributes significantly to the marginalisation faced by people with disabilities. 

The fact is that disability is both a cause and a consequence of poverty. If the world is to have any hope of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals – especially eliminating poverty, achieving gender equality, and enhancing social and economic inclusion – the needs of people with disabilities must be fully considered. 

-- Project Syndicate