Women With Disabilities Australia (wwda) wwda-news issue 2, 2012

Women With Disabilities Australia (WWDA)
WWDA-NEWS

Issue 2, 2012

© ISSN: 1836-7739
Prepared by Carolyn Frohmader for Women With Disabilities Australia (WWDA)

This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced without written permission from Women With Disabilities Australia (WWDA). All possible care has been taken in the preparation of the information contained in this document. WWDA disclaims any liability for the accuracy and sufficiency of the information and under no circumstances shall be liable in negligence or otherwise in or arising out of the preparation or supply of any of the information aforesaid.

About Women With Disabilities Australia (WWDA)
Women With Disabilities Australia (WWDA) is the peak organisation for women with all types of disabilities in Australia. WWDA is run by women with disabilities, for women with disabilities. It is the only organisation of its kind in Australia and one of only a very small number internationally. It represents more than 2 million disabled women in Australia and operates as a national disability organisation; a national women's organisation; and a national human rights organisation. WWDA is inclusive and does not discriminate against any disability. The aim of WWDA is to be a national voice for the needs and rights of women with disabilities and a national force to improve the lives and life chances of women with disabilities. WWDA is committed to promoting and advancing the human rights and fundamental freedoms of women with disabilities.
Our work is grounded in a rights based framework which links gender and disability issues to a full range of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights. This rights based approach recognises that equal treatment, equal opportunity, and non-discrimination provide for inclusive opportunities for women and girls with disabilities in society. It also seeks to create greater awareness among governments and other relevant institutions of their obligations to fulfil, respect, protect and promote human rights and to support and empower women with disabilities, both individually and collectively, to claim their rights.
More information about WWDA can be found at the organisation’s extensive website: www.wwda.org.au
Previous Newsletters and Update Reports are available on the WWDA website at: www.wwda.org.au/bulletin.htm
If you have any questions, or would like more information on anything in this Newsletter, please email Carolyn at: [e-mail]

WWDA

PO Box 605, Rosny Park, Tasmania 7018 AUSTRALIA

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Email: [e-mail] Web: www.wwda.org.au
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In This Issue:
A Word from the WWDA Acting President
Special Report: WWDA Delivers at High Level Panel on ‘Rural Women and Girls With Disabilities’ at UN
Women with disabilities meet with the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women
New Project: ‘Voices against Violence: Assessing the Evidence on Violence against Women with Disabilities’
Article on Sterilisation in marie claire Magazine
Channel Ten Program discusses Sterilisation of Women and Girls with Disabilities
WWDA Presents Workshop at International Domestic Violence Conference
‘Way with Words’ – By Margie Charlesworth
Disability in Indigenous communities: addressing the disadvantage
The 2nd World Assembly of Women with Disabilities
National Violence Plan Implementation Panel (NPIP) - Report from the Inaugural meeting
Resources
Join WWDA!
News Wanted For WWDA-NEWS!
Appendix 1: References & Endnotes


A Word from the WWDA Acting President
Hello WWDA Members and friends,
Welcome to the latest edition of WWDA-News. As it always the case, WWDA has been extremely busy this past few months. Our advocacy work against forced sterilisation, and violence against women and girls with disabilities, is having significant impact, both domestically and overseas. In April, we helped to organise, and participated in, a Roundtable with Ms Rashida Manjoo, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women. The Roundtable, with more than 25 women with disabilities and experts working in the field, provided a critical opportunity to have a dialogue with the Special Rapporteur around violence against women and girls with disabilities in Australia. Ms Manjoo, who met with us as part of her 10 day study tour of Australia, made special mention at the Roundtable of the high standard of WWDA’s contribution to the preparation phase of the UN Analytical Study on Violence Against Women and Girls with Disabilities.
Our work against forced sterilisation of girls and women with disabilities has seen significant media interest in the issue. marie claire magazine published a feature article on the issue, in its June 2012 edition. Channel Ten television program The Circle also discussed the issue in a live to air interview with disability activist Stella Young and Dr Margaret Spencer, from the intellectual Disability Rights Service. WWDA Executive Director Carolyn Frohmader continues to work on the issue at the international level, as part of her work as a member of the International Working Group on Forced Sterilisation.
The past few months have been difficult for WWDA as we have continued to navigate our way through a period of transition. Our national office is nearing the completion of its renovations, and Carolyn has done a great job in keeping all the balls in the air whilst we recruited a new administrative assistant. We are pleased to welcome Suzanne Boffey to the national WWDA office, who started with us in April and is already proving to be a great asset to the organisation.
In early May, we accepted the resignation of our President Sue Salthouse, who stepped down from the role as President and from the WWDA Management Committee, due to family reasons. On behalf of the members of WWDA, we thank Sue for the enormous contribution she has made to our organisation over the past decade. In August 2011, Sue’s dedication, enthusiasm and generosity was formally recognised, when she was awarded Life Membership of WWDA, joining a small group of esteemed WWDA members. We look forward to Sue’s continued involvement in WWDA as we continue on our journey.
This edition of WWDA-News includes a Special Report on the High Level Panel on ‘Rural Women and Girls With Disabilities’, held at the 56th session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), in New York, in late February 2012. WWDA member and past-President, Associate Professor Helen Meekosha, did an extraordinary job representing us at this ground-breaking event, and we take this opportunity to thank her for her amazing advocacy work on our behalf.
As Acting WWDA President, I’d also like to make special mention of the efforts of our Executive Director Carolyn Frohmader. Sometimes people forget that WWDA is an organisation of only one full time worker, and one (very recent) part time admin assistant. I thank Carolyn for her leadership in steering us through a difficult few months, whilst maintaining the high standard and integrity of our work.
Margie Charlesworth

WWDA Acting President

Special Report: WWDA Delivers at High Level Panel on ‘Rural Women and Girls With Disabilities’ at United Nations
In the last issue of WWDA-News, we reported on WWDA’s work in late 2011 and early 2012 to help plan, organise and co-sponsor a High Level Panel on ‘Rural Women and Girls With Disabilities’ at the 56^th session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW).¹ The High Level Panel on ‘Rural Women and Girls With Disabilities’ was held on Tuesday 28 February gave an overview of the situation of rural women with disabilities and explored a wide range of strategies that can enhance the empowerment of rural women with disabilities. The Panel was co-sponsored by the Government of Australia, the Permanent Mission of Sweden to the United Nations, the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Women with Disabilities Australia (WWDA), Women Enabled, and the Women’s UN Report Network.
WWDA was represented on the Panel by our Board member and Past President, Associate Professor Helen Meekosha. Helen gave a presentation on ‘Rural Women & Girls With Disabilities: Economic Empowerment & Political Participation’ from the Australian perspective. In this edition of WWDA-News, we are pleased to be able to provide a copy of Helen’s presentation, along with copies of most of the presentations given at the High Level Panel on ‘Rural Women and Girls With Disabilities’.
The Panel was a significant event, as it was only the second time that a specific focus on disability has been discussed at any of the sessions of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) in the UN in all of its 56 years. The significance of this Panel for women with disabilities cannot be over-stated. On a broader advocacy level, it was also significant that this Panel was given such a high profile, with the opportunity of two governments sponsoring it (Australia and Sweden), with a consequent flow on effect to influencing some of the draft conclusions which were put forward to the CSW Committee, as well as contributing to the preparation of the 2013 UN High Level Meeting on Disability and Development.
Ms Akiko Ito (Chief, Secretariat for the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities), gave the welcoming remarks. A song and dance performance was given by 10 women and girls with disabilities from rural areas of Bhutan, who had travelled to Thimpu to participate in the Panel via video conference. Ms Elizabeth Broderick (Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Australian Human Rights Commission and Australian delegate to the Commission on the Status of Women), and Mr Arvid Linden (Head of Division of Analysis, HANDISAM, Swedish Agency for Disability Policy and Coordination), both gave opening addresses. Presentations were given by Associate Professor Helen Meekosha (WWDA & UNSW); Ms Duptho Zam (English Teacher and Performing Artist, Royal Academy of Performing Arts of Bhutan and Disability rights Expert (via video conference); Ms Myra Kovary (International Network of Women With Disabilities) and Ms Lois A. Herman (Women’s UN Report Network). The panel was moderated by Ms Stephanie Ortoleva, Esq., (Senior Human Rights Legal Advisor, BlueLaw International, LLP).
The High Level Panel on Rural Women and Girls with Disabilities event was encouragingly attended by many NGO constituents and government representatives from other countries. There were also many women with disabilities who attended this side event, which is significant, given the lack of access and encouragement to attend other CSW sessions. The Panel instigated much discussion, particularly from women from African countries, and resulted in further networking opportunities. Plans are afoot for organising a parallel NGO event for next year’s CSW, which will focus on violence against women.
WWDA would like to take this opportunity to thank the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) for providing a grant to assist with the costs of getting Helen to and from New York. We also acknowledge the support of the University of New South Wales (UNSW) for providing funding to enable Helen’s assistant (Ms Katrina Wong), to accompany her to CSW56. We would particularly like to thank Alison Aggarwal and Cristina Ricci of the AHRC for their support and encouragement in helping WWDA to plan and organise this amazing event; and Elizabeth Broderick (Sex Discrimination Commissioner) for her fantastic contribution to our panel, and her ongoing support of WWDA. And a special note of thanks to Katrina Wong, not only for the assistance she provided to Helen, but also for helping WWDA with logistics behind the scenes.
It is a pleasure to be able to provide WWDA-News readers with transcripts of some of the Panel presentations, and we thank the authors for sharing them with us.
Presentation by Associate Professor Helen Meekosha to the High Level Panel on Rural Women & Girls With Disabilities: Economic Empowerment & Political Participation
I wish to acknowledge the prior owners of the land on which we meet today, the Native American people – the Lenape.
In addressing the topic of this session – economic empowerment and political participation of rural disabled girls and women – we need first to consider how we think about disability, gender and rurality. There are many types of disability, although often when we use the word 'disability' what immediately comes to mind are women who use wheelchairs for mobility or people who are blind or deaf.
As we can see from the Universal Access symbol is “not just a symbol of access, but of disability itself” (Ben-Moshe and Powell 2007). Ironically, that this symbol is rarely seen in rural and remote areas, tells a story about rural planning and the lack of encouragement for disabled people in rural areas to participate in civic life.
Many other conditions can fall under the category of disability and they include sensory, cognitive, developmental, communication, mobility and mental health conditions. Not all of these are visible and many women have to live with the ignorance of the wider community.
Secondly, disabled women have many identities and are in various relationships, which change during the life cycle. Disabled girls have different issues to older disabled women. Disabled women may be single, married, divorced and in a heterosexual or same-sex relationship. They may identify as transgender or transsexual. They may be unemployed, partially employed or in full-time work. They may live in urban areas, regional, rural or remote areas. They may be able to trace their kinship and families back a long way in the place they live.
They may be indigenous people, who have been forced off their country but still retain a strong connection with their land. They may be immigrants in a settler society, such as the USA, Canada or Australia, who suffer from racial discrimination as well as all the deprivations and disavowal that are ever present for a disabled woman.
Importantly for my talk today, disabled women may live in the global South or the global North. Although not all countries in the global South are poor, I use North–South terminology as shorthand for a complex of inequalities that are embedded in historical relations of global power: colonization, invasion, war, land theft, dispossession and so on. Southern countries are, broadly, those historically conquered or controlled by modern imperial powers, leaving a continuing legacy of poverty, economic exploitation and dependence. The ‘North’ refers to the centres of the global economy in Western Europe and North America, notably England and the USA. As will become clear, it is important to make these distinctions to place disability in a historical context. Many people in the global South, including disabled women, who are often the poorest of the poor, still live without access to resources, clean water or adequate housing in rural and remote areas.
Disability, rurality and gender come together in a set of social relations in which individuals and groups act. Sometimes disabled women's bodies are the sites of power struggles, dispossession and violence. Sometimes disabled women are agents in exerting power to fight back. Indeed, in this room today, we have evidence of the agency exercised by disabled women in shaping attitudes and institutions around the globe.
We need to situate rural women in the context of increasing globalization as well as acknowledge the significance of their relationship to the land and their communities. I have already referred to this complex relationship of rural women to the global in talking about the global South and the global North. One billion people in the world are disabled, which is 15% of the total population. But importantly, when we are discussing rural women, 80% of disabled people, or approximately 40% of disabled women, live in the global South, which has major implications for the recommendations and work of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.
We know that disabled women are severely disadvantaged based on a range of socioeconomic indicators, such as employment, education and income. What happens if we add rural and remote living to the balance? Among other things, we uncover the tyranny of distance for disabled women.
I want to turn to disability in a remote context. In my own country, Australia, which is geographically in the global South, many Aboriginal people live in remote areas. It is estimated that 69% of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people live in regional, rural and remote areas (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2007). The legacy of invasion, colonization and land theft can be seen in the 50% of the indigenous population over the age of 15 who in 2008 had a disability or long-term health condition (ibid). Disability Studies has been criticized for its ‘whiteness’ (Stienstra 2011) and nowhere is this more apparent than for Aboriginal communities living in remote areas.
I want to focus on an example of a remote community organization operating in the centre of Australia, so that the excellent work carried out by the organization gets international recognition. The following information is taken from the website of the Waltja Tjutangku Palyapayi Aboriginal Corporation.²

Waltja Tjutangku Palyapayi, based in Alice Springs, is an Aboriginal women’s organization working in central desert communities, covering an area of over 700,000 square kilometres and including 10 main language groups, with the workers travelling between three states. The map above gives some sense of the vastness of the country in which the workers travel to visit isolated communities. It shows only the western and central parts of Australia (the full map of Australia can encompass most of Europe!)

As stated on the website, “Waltja works to support people with a disability, living in remote communities, to be active members within their own community.…..Waltja gets the opportunity to assist people with a disability and carers to address both current issues and personal aspirations.”
Through funding from the Northern Territory Government they can provide up to AUD$500 a year for a person with a disability for items such as mattresses, blankets, clothing, walking aids, fuel or food (Nangala et al, 2004). The disabled women who live in this vast area also need housing, clean water and safe roads. Windbreaks are essential so that people with disabilities can sit outside.
In some communities served by the Waltja organization, up to 85% of children are deaf as a result otitis media (a middle ear infection that is both preventable and treatable). There is no program to support teachers with profoundly deaf students. This results in shame and the children refusing to attend school.
Moving from remote Australia to rural Australia, I want to mention the findings of research³ I undertook in December 2011 with disabled women in Tasmania, an island of 68,401 square kilometres which is separated from the south of Australia by the Bass Strait. It is a well-known staging post for Antarctic expeditions.
The research revealed a complexity of life for women with a disability living in rural and bush environments. All of the women I spoke to enjoyed living in a rural area and none wanted to return or move to the city. They often spoke of the peace and quiet, the sound of birdlife and the bush as therapeutic and comforting. I found remarkable resilience displayed by disabled women and girls in rural areas despite often having to live with a lack of understanding by the wider community, discrimination, abuse and loneliness.
The first and perhaps most important issue raised was mobility and access to services, due to – among other factors – either a complete lack of, or at best irregular, public transport. Access to services both public and private, such as health professionals, required a trip into the city and reliance on a friend or relative to drive. In some areas, community transport existed but it was necessary to be booked well in advance of the appointment. Many women with mobility impairments could not even leave their homes, as once outside, there were often no safe pavements; just gravel or grass strips running alongside the roads.
The experience of social exclusion from community life was common – a sense of not being welcomed at community events and fundraising functions or sporting activities. Alongside this exclusion was sometimes a sense of fear of having their disability disclosed. Women with mental health issues talked of ‘living with a secret’. For others, it was fear of welfare workers that were in a position to ‘take their children away’. Some girls and young women felt that they were the only ‘different’ ones in the community and that the lack of acknowledgement of diversity and difference by tightknit and conservative communities was detrimental to their wellbeing. For some young women, this changed dramatically when they moved to the city to study.
Domestic violence and abuse of disabled women is now acknowledged as a major problem. But for many disabled women living in rural areas who were interviewed, ‘suffering in silence’ was a typical response. Some felt there was no alternative and that they were ‘trapped’ in their houses with their partner. Physical abuse was not the only type of abuse. Emotional abuse was also evident. On several occasions women reported that their partners had cancelled or stopped their home care services on their behalf. One woman had been allocated time for a support person to work in her garden – a major love in her life – but this was stopped by her partner.
I believe there are many important projects for the UNCSW to undertake with rural and disabled women. However, in the first instance, there are some essential steps that need to be taken. Disabled women need to have their voices and stories heard. They need to be recognized and respected. Today we have taken one big step in that direction. In order to be economically empowered and able to participate in our political systems we may need accommodations. For example, we need physical access, we need interpreters, we need funding for support workers, we need presenters to be aware that blind people cannot read overheads and they need to be described orally! It is not just a matter of opening the doors, if the doors lead to a flight of steps.
For rural disabled women, economic empowerment often means leaving their country towns and villages and going for training in the city. In my research in Australia the women who had been able to access education and training were also able to advance economically. Those who had to stay in the rural areas had much less success. In many countries the rural areas are in decline – some women I spoke to talked of living in ‘ghost towns’. If these women are to attain economic self-sufficiency as well as exercise their democratic rights in civic life, we have to revitalize rural areas.
For the UNCSW, the first steps for involving disabled women in the work of the Commission are recognition of their particular lived experiences and respect of their personhood. This will only come about if we go into the rural and remote regions of our countries and meet with disabled women in their own environment. For those of us who live in the city, this may be a tough call, but I leave you with this challenge.
I would like to thank you all for listening today.