This paper examines the disproportionate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on women and girls with disabilities in India. It finds that existing inequalities faced by these groups have been exacerbated during the crisis. Women and girls with disabilities struggle with inaccessible health services, higher risk of domestic violence, unemployment, and an inability to meet basic needs. The pandemic has also worsened existing mental health issues and isolation for disabled people. While India has laws promoting disability rights, implementation remains a challenge. The paper calls for more inclusive pandemic recovery efforts that address the specific needs of women and girls with disabilities.

1. Gender Regression among differently abled women
during Pandemic times
Dr. Melissa. C. Remedios, Assistant Professor, Department of
Sociology and Industrial Relations, St. Joseph’s University,
Bengaluru.

2. BACK GROUND OF THE PAPER
• Persons with disabilities both visible & invisible face obstacles and discrimination in
accessing health care and other essential services, social protection and income security,
mental health services and communication technologies.
• Women and girls with disabilities who are migrants, refugees or from ethnic minorities
endure even more hardships and unequal treatment. Gender, disability and structural
inequalities which characterized societies before the crisis are being exacerbated by the
multifaceted impact of the Covid 19 crisis.
• Women remain widely unrepresented in most facets of the world. Both pre and post
pandemic, women have a much lower attrition rate compared to men. During covid,
working mothers and women in senior positions were the largest group to quit their jobs;
the reason being that time spent on caring for their families and dealing with household
responsibilities increased.
• Covid-19 drove women to either consider leaving their job or stepping back from their
careers, as biological care givers they still continue to bear the larger home burden than
most fathers.
• Women with disabilities during covid times struggled with not just physical and emotional
abuse, but also abandonment, deprivation from assistive devices and medicines, much
needed essentials to get through daily routine.

3. FOCUS OF THE PAPER
• The situation of persons with disabilities through the gender lens:
• Persons with disabilities faced the same risk of infection from Covid 19-
as the rest of the population.
• However in many cases, the danger posed by the virus is computed by
many other factors.
• In addition to the disruption of essential services and support, pre-
existing health conditions in some cases leave persons with disabilities
more at risk of developing serious health conditions.
• In general persons with disabilities have more health care related needs
than others, both standard needs and needs linked to their impairments
and are therefore more vulnerable to the negative impact of low quality
or inaccessible healthcare services than those without disabilities.

4. The intention of this paper:
• The pandemic for women with disability has brought about a tectonic shift in the way they live,
survive and sustain. So it has for populations across the globe, but it would be painfully near-
sighted to say that we are all in the same boat.
• The World Health Organisation (WHO) notes, “Disability is thus not just a health problem. It is
a complex phenomenon, reflecting the interaction between features of a person’s body and
features of the society in which he or she lives. Overcoming the difficulties faced by people
with disabilities requires interventions to remove environmental and social barriers.”
• The environmental and social barriers have only increased during the pandemic, persons with
disabilities are often unable to access mainstream healthcare services due to unaffordability,
attitudinal barriers, inaccessibility to healthcare facilities, and lack of alternatives means to
access public health information and communications for those with visual impairments as
well as hearing or cognitive disabilities.
• The Pandemic had further intensified the health risks of persons with disabilities who are living
in institutional settings. Among those with disabilities, women and girls face systemic barriers
to equality and inclusion with limited visibility in disability and gender laws, policies and
practices.

5. Review of Literature:
• The paper focuses on the articles that talk about the times during COVID-19
pandemic, where women’s with disabilities experience intersectional
discrimination, marginalization, and stigma that is distinct from the discrimination
experienced by other non specially abled women and girls. As such, international
human rights standards recognize the right of gender non-conforming persons
with disabilities to be free from discrimination in situations like these.
• For many of people experiencing marginalization around the world, however, the
lessons from past disasters and emergencies did not translate into rights
protections, and they found themselves left behind in the COVID-19 response.
Indeed, both women and persons with disabilities have experienced
disproportionate impacts on their employment, their health, and their well-being
due to the COVID-19 crisis.
• Those experiencing intersectional discrimination based on gender and disability,
such as women and girls with disabilities, have faced even greater barriers to
accessing healthcare, including Sexual & Reproductive health, and victims to
higher risks of violence, unemployment, and inability to meet basic needs.

6. Brief Methodology:
• The methodology seeks to elicit secondary data from research articles and journals about
the issues which is including access to healthcare, particularly Sexual and primary
healthcare information, goods, and services; safety from violence; access to support
services and other means to meet basic needs; and access to education, employment,
and other income among people from the specially abled community.
• This paper also provides an assessment of the impact of COVID-19 on the exercise of
rights for and well-being of women and girls with disabilities around the world.
• The articles are based on the virtual consultations and written survey results from over
300 women, girls, and gender non-conforming persons with disabilities, as well as their
advocates, family members, and support persons, in all of the major world regions.
• This Impact Assessment has a particular focuses on the freedom from gender-based
violence (GBV) for women and girls with disabilities.
• All persons with disabilities—including women and girls with disabilities— maintain a right
to bodily autonomy and a right to be free from violence, even when facing humanitarian
crises. States have agreed to respect, protect, and ensure these rights by ratifying the
Convention on the Rights with Disabilities (CRPD), the Convention on the Elimination of
All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), and other human rights treaties, as
well.

7. RESEARCH OBJECTIVE
• To study the impact of women and girls with disabilities during
covid times
• To analyze the experiences of women with disabilities across
India to record the experiences of women with disabilities.
• To understand the counter the risk of women with disabilities
being left behind in the COVID-19 recovery policies, planning
and economic packages going forward.

8. Analysis and Findings:
• The Legal and Policy Frameworks and Responses in India
• India has ratified the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the Convention on the Rights of Child (CRC)
and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). It is a signatory to
the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development which outlines the Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs). To realize global commitments at the national level the
Government has enacted some progressive laws like the Rights of Persons with
Disabilities (RPD) Act 2016, the Mental Healthcare Act 2017, and Criminal Law
Amendment 2013.
• These laws have reflected issues faced by women with disabilities to some extent. The
CRPD mandates rights based approaches towards the inclusion of persons with
disabilities in humanitarian frameworks (Article 11), twin track approaches towards the
inclusion of women with disabilities (Article 6), the enjoyment of the highest attainable
standard of health, including sexual and reproductive health, without discrimination on the
basis of disability

9. Conclusion
• Accessibility to space: As COVID-19 began its spread in India, there was a shift in
many of our workplaces to remote working and education to distance learning.
• In these times of social distancing and remote operations, digital accessibility becomes a
central question for us to raise. In a country as vast as ours, access to accessible
information, communication technologies are poor.
• The census 2011 data shows that 69% of the disabled population in India lives in rural
areas , which has limited internet penetration, with one study 51 putting it at 21%52.
• Even then many may not communicate in the mainstream languages that most digital
spaces are designed in.
• The Ongoing Mental Health Crisis The pandemic has shifted and made worse many of
these situations. It has even been labelled as a mental health crisis because of the
isolation, the fear and anxiety of contracting the illnesses.
• These are all worsened for people with disabilities.
• Especially when a lot of the initial messaging around the pandemic in opposition to
lockdown measures has been that only people with pre-existing conditions, elderly,
disabled will be susceptible to dying.

10. Remarks:
• Every disaster brings with it the opportunity to build back better – be it
systems of resilience among communities, service delivery or design of
programmes and interventions.
• In many respects the pandemic has opened a discussion over issues
which were earlier not considered feasible and which can be enabled
through technology.
• All stakeholders adopt inclusive approaches to rebuilding our communities
and systems in the aftermath of COVID-19 and provide opportunities for
leadership and showcasing of social innovations that organizations of and
for persons with disabilities have developed in these challenging times,
specifically around the inclusion and experiences of women and girls with
disabilities.

11. THANK YOU!