After completing her Master’s in Biochemistry, a woman applied to a large Belgian pharmaceutical company as a research assistant. The interview went well, but when she told the recruiter about her hearing impairment and pregnancy, she was offered an office job instead of the position she applied for. What would you do? She filed a lawsuit and the Antwerp Labor Court awarded her cumulative damages, finding that she had suffered multiple discrimination on the basis of her disability and gender. Cases like this show the importance of laws that recognize intersectional and multiple discrimination.
Women with disabilities around the world face negative attitudes regarding their reproductive rights, stigma regarding their economic participation, inaccessible infrastructure and technologies, and lack of awareness of their rights and needs. Discrimination by policymakers. Sexism and ableism (discrimination and social prejudice against people with disabilities or perceived to be disabled) intersect to create these environmental barriers, isolating the experiences of women with disabilities from disabled men and non-disabled women. As a result, women with disabilities are often excluded from economic opportunities and social participation, and experience higher rates of gender-based violence.
While Women, Business and the Law (WBL) has documented how legal barriers to women’s economic opportunities have changed around the world since 1970, the WBL Index uses standardized assumptions to ensure comparability of data across 190 economies, including the assumption that the women in question do not have disabilities. As a result, the Index overlooks accessibility barriers related to both disability and gender. To fill this gap, the WBL Project has committed, building on the World Bank Group’s Commitment No. 4 on Disability-Inclusive Development, to introduce a question on disability to better understand the state of economic empowerment of women with disabilities.
Three-quarters of the world’s economies have no legal basis for multiple forms of discrimination against women with disabilities.
With support from the Human Rights, Inclusion and Empowerment (HRIE) Umbrella Trust Fund, Women, Business and the Law recently expanded its pilot data collection on the rights of women with disabilities to add 11 questions about non-discrimination provisions and legal protections. on parental rights, inclusion in the workforce and protection from gender-based violence (Box 1).This newly released data confirms previously found gaps, with three-quarters of the world’s economies still not allowing multiple forms of discrimination against women with disabilities in law.
Box 1. Women, Business and the Law 2022 Research Questions on the Rights of Women with Disabilities
Are there gender equality or anti-discrimination laws that specifically recognize and protect the rights of women with disabilities? Are there disability laws that specifically protect and promote the rights of women with disabilities? Do disability rights laws follow a social model? Does the law provide support for women with disabilities in exercising their parental rights and responsibilities (e.g. extended maternity leave, financial support, legal protection to maintain custody of children)? Are there laws or policies that require reasonable accommodation for workers with disabilities? If the answer is yes, do the laws or policies regarding reasonable accommodation mention women with disabilities? If the answer is yes, do the laws or policies regarding employment incentives mention women with disabilities? Do domestic violence laws explicitly mention women with disabilities? Do domestic violence laws ensure that services are available to women with disabilities who are victims of violence? Are there laws regarding sexual harassment of women with disabilities?
A new policy brief, The Importance of Developing Gender- and Disability-Inclusive Legislation: A Survey of Legislation in 190 Countries, explains why research on the intersection of disability and gender is important and shares examples of good practice. For example: Only 10 countries have references to women with disabilities in both their gender equality laws and disability rights laws. The Marshall Islands is one of them. The 2019 Gender Equality Act states that “Women and girls with disabilities have the right to gender equality and non-discrimination on an equal basis with other women,” and the 2015 Disability Rights Act provides that “The Ministry, in collaboration with other relevant ministries and agencies, shall take appropriate measures to ensure the full and equal enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms by women and children with disabilities.”
The report describes the multifaceted experiences of discrimination against women with disabilities and the need for laws to simultaneously address disability and gender to provide adequate support and protection to women with disabilities. However, data shows that while 86 of the 190 countries surveyed have gender equality or anti-discrimination laws, only 30 specifically mention the rights of women with disabilities. Furthermore, while 157 countries have disability rights laws, only 52 mention women with disabilities (Figure 1). Moreover, of the world’s economies with disability rights laws, only half (74 out of 157) use the social model of disability in their laws, in line with the international standard established by the CRPD.
Figure 1. The number of countries with disability laws has nearly tripled between 1990 and 2022, but only about one-third of those have women-specific laws.
Source: Women, Business and Law Database. Note: The number of economies with laws are not mutually exclusive, i.e., economies with laws that specifically protect and promote the rights of women with disabilities are also counted as economies with laws regarding disabilities. CRPD = United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
We still have a lot to learn about removing barriers within our own organization, for example, how to make our research accessible to all. For the first time, the authors and the DECIG editorial team partnered with the World Bank’s Disability Inclusion Team to ensure that published summaries adhered to accessibility guidelines. We strongly encourage other teams to do the same and establish procedures for more inclusive publications.
The second policy note, to be published soon in the Global Indicator Overview series, will analyze the remaining seven questions in the dataset and highlight good practices from countries that recognize women with disabilities’ rights to family life, labor force participation, and a life free from violence. Additionally, Women, Business and Law is working to develop an operational toolkit for World Bank task team leaders to guide the process of including women with disabilities in the design, implementation, and evaluation stages of projects.
Let’s continue learning about how we can better protect the rights of women with disabilities.