Women with disabilities face significant barriers in accessing education, health, employment, and public spaces due to inadequate infrastructure, unsafe environments, and poorly designed public amenities. This inaccessibility not only hampers their mobility but also heightens their vulnerability to harassment and abuse, perpetuating cycles of discrimination and isolation. Furthermore, in developing regions, disabled women experience compounded poverty and limited educational opportunities, exacerbating their overall socio-economic challenges.

1. GENDER AND DISABILITY
Some Facts
1. Women with disabilities cannot access
education, health, employment / livelihood
opportunities, socialization, tourism, etc. in
absence of accessible and safe infrastructure-
built, transit and external environment.
2. Lack of accessible public amenities and poor
maintenance of public spaces pose another
threat to women with disabilities.
Inaccessible Infrastructure
1.The pavements are often used as men’s urinals,
which makes access to these sidewalks
extremely uncomfortable for women.
2.The lack of good lighting in many areas is a
further hindrance to their mobility and safety.

2. Accessible public toilets
1. The lack of safe and clean public toilets poses a
serious safety and public health hazard. In
addition, toilets in all the cities are poorly
designed. For example, the entrance to the
women’s toilet is often at the same place as the
entrance to the men’s toilet and this adds to its
inaccessibility for women.
2. In slums and rural areas, the problem is even
more severe as there are no private toilets.
3. The lack of or the very poor state of the public
toilets leaves them no option but to use open
fields, exposing them to the danger of sexual
assault.

3. Inaccessible Environment-lead to abuse and
harassment
1.Women with disabilities find it hard to trust
people in public and are often wary when
strangers offer help.
2.There are instances when they get into
‘uncomfortable situations’ where strangers, on
the pretext of helping them, try to touch them
in offensive ways.
3.Abuse due to unfriendly assistive device and
environment badly design assistive devices lead
to discrimination and abuse.
Non-disabled abusers may use a woman’s
impairment as part of the abuse, increasing
both the abuser’s power and control and the
woman’s vulnerability and isolation.

4. In the public arena:
1. Younger disabled women achieve lower
educational outcomes than men.
2. Disabled women are less likely to be in
the paid workforce than either man with
disabilities for non disabled women, and in
general have lower incomes from
employment.
In the private and familial arena:
1. Disabled women are more likely to be
living on their own or in their parental
family than men;
2. Disabled women are more likely to be
divorced and less likely to marry than
men with disabilities
3. Women are more likely to face medical
interventions to control their fertility.

5. Moreover in the developing world,
gender patterns in relation to disability
indicate that:
1. Poverty hits harder on women and
girls due to patriarchal property
ownership structures
2. Aid is less likely to reach women and
girls who are less able to compete in
situations of scarcity
3. Disabled women are more vulnerable
to domestic violence
4. Disabled girls are likely to find their
access to education even more limited
than girls in general.
_______________________________________
By: ABHISHEK SHARMA