Let women with disabilities enjoy free independent living

Advocacy for women rights has taken centre stage in all aspects of social interaction world wide in recent years. So much has been said and done about women and women emancipation. The 21st century has seen women gaining ground by acquiring positions of authority and creating opportunities for themselves in key areas of influence. It could be said that the Beijing Declaration at the Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995 made no specific mention of women with disabilities had no small impetus to the advancement of women.

These have ranged from political power at the local level to holding influential positions at the international stage. Easy names to recall are Zimbabwe Vice President Joyce Mujuru, President of Liberia Johnson-Sirleaf Africa’s first woman President, Condoleezza Rice the Secretary of State of the United States of America, Dr Asha-Rose Migiro Deputy United Nations Secretary General.

The recognition of women as equal partners in human development has had discernable benefits downstream. Women in all walks of life now have role models they can look up to for inspiration.

Women with disabilities however appear to be sidelined in most of these positive developments. It is instructive to note that the Beijing Declaration at the Fourth World Conference makes no direct reference on the concerns of women with disabilities. This omission may have had some negative effects on the progress of women with disabilities towards realising their goal for an accessible barrier free equitable environment.

The latent discrimination against women in general and women with disabilities in particular has put them at a disadvantage even at the family level. The notion that women are helpers or care givers in a family still survives to this day. When a woman cannot fulfil that role she is considered a misfit and therefore not useful to the family.

This belief is seen to be justifiable particularly in times of bereavement or family gatherings like weddings even in so-called modern families. A daughter-in-law is expected to be heavily involved in taking care of the gathered family through such tasks as cooking and serving food. In rural areas the daughter is expected to, besides the already mentioned tasks, provide water, light the kitchen fire, sweep the rooms/huts and yard and do other related domestic duties.

The family’s custom based expectations inevitably turn disability into a handicap. Members of the family are not usually prepared to have a daughter-in-law who is unable perform her ‘normal’ duties in such social gatherings. According to them, failure to do these duties lowers the standing of the family within the community. The traditional norms and values of a ‘respectable’ African family are also compromised.

In situations where the husband of a woman with disabilities goes against the wishes of the family to divorce or to put more crudely, get rid of his wife, the defiant man is ostracised and disowned. He is turned into an outcast who nobody in the family wants to relate to let alone invite to family social occasions.

Resentment against woman with disabilities also stems from the belief that the responsible male member may bring ‘bad blood’ into the family. It is believed that the couple’s offspring and future generations would be affected by the ‘bad blood’ of disability from the woman with disabilities.

What is not generally known is that genetic related malformations or deficiencies are not visible until the right conditions are created. A perfectly normal looking person can have a hereditary genetic related condition that can only become apparent when s/he mothers or fathers a child with such a disability. Albinism, epilepsy, hereditary spinal ataxia, hereditary motor and sensory neuropathy are but a few examples of hereditary disabilities.

It is such circumstances that have forced women with disabilities to seek and accept men with disabilities as life partners. Partners who ‘understand’ their situation. It is unfortunate that society apparently encourages these marriages through these covert and overt means

Marrying for love is one thing and marrying because there is no other option is another. Women with disabilities have been rendered even more dependable by marrying others of their kind for example, the visually impaired marrying each other. In genetic induced disabilities the outcome of such unions are offspring who are even more vulnerable because of the combined, therefore more debilitating genetic deficiency phenomenon. A case in point is albinism. If people with albinism marry each other their children are likely to be more susceptible to skin cancer and lower vision than their parents. This is because the melanin (skin colouring pigment) deficiency that causes the disability would be more severe.

On a social level stigmatisation of people with disabilities is reinforced as people refer to that blind family or deaf family or albino family. Some of these families have developed into clan dimensions. The disability has become a reference symbol not the family as a normal social institution. This has in consequence made the reintegration of such people into mainstream society even more difficult.

Some unscrupulous leaders of charity organisations have used women with disabilities as bait for personal financial gain. The donor community is readily amenable to requests for funding by women groups in general and women with disabilities in particular. However very little trickles down to the woman in the street or in the village. Most of these funds are used up in workshops, which are usually attended by the informed, and the who is who in the disability rights movements.

Women with disabilities who are bound by traditional trappings or male influenced norms and values have not been given practical support to make their environment at family or community levels liveable. There is very little visible counselling and educational advocacy at village level where the unenlightened perpetrate practices that are not only destructive but violate the basic tenets of human rights.

It cannot be argued that advocacy and the sourcing of funding for self-help micro projects has been relatively effective and successful respectively. However more needs to be done at the grassroots level to break down age-old barriers that exclude women with disabilities from partaking in social activities freely and independently.

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Richard Nyathi is an activist on disability issues. For comments and contributions, please e-mail:

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