The needs of persons with disabilities differ widely. This depends not only on the type and severity of disability but also on the way disability intersects with other forms of exclusion, such as class, gender, age and ethnicity.Â
Children, older people, women, indigenous people, refugees and displaced persons, minorities and people from different race and class may all experience disability differently. Some may suffer multiple disadvantages as a result of their wider social or economic status. Even within these categories needs can differ widely, for example between richer and poorer women.
The consequences are particularly severe for women with disabilities who are also subject to social, cultural and economic disadvantages due to gender discrimination. Girls with disability are less likely to attend school than boys with disability.Â
A significant majority of girls with a disability in developing countries remain illiterate. Women with disability are less likely to be employed (only 19.6 per cent of women with disability are employed, compared to 52.8 per cent of men with disability), and earn lower wages.Â
Women with disability are two to three times more likely to experience physical and sexual abuse than those without disability. In many developing countries women are assigned a low status, socially, economically and politically. This is accentuated when disability occurs. Girls and women with disabilities are left marginalised, neglected and are often considered a burden.
Adopting an intersectional lens, allows to move beyond assumptions and even unconscious bias about pre-determined ‘vulnerable groups’, for example ‘women’ or ‘persons with disabilities’; to unpack what makes an individual, group or community vulnerable to ‘the problem’ a project aims to address.Â
An intersectional approach recognises that it is a combination of multiple individual characteristics and factors relating to the environment (or society), which come together to shape a person’s vulnerability.
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