Social Lives
Author: Eliona Gjecaj is an early-stage researcher in the DARE project (Disability Advocacy Research Europe) based at the University of Iceland. Her PhD research focuses on ‘Violence against Disabled Women: Access to Justice’ in Iceland and the UK.
Today, on International Women’s Day, I would like to celebrate all the survivors of gender-based violence, especially disabled women, and encourage others to come forward and tell someone. Gender-based violence is not and should not be taboo. Much like the saying ‘talk the talk, walk the walk’, we must have the experience talk. We must access the justice walk.
Let’s first highlight that there are so many unheard experiences of gender-based violence of disabled women that we need to hear, to believe, to recognise as breaches of law, and thus, provide support and access to reporting and prosecuting such violence. Lack of disability-rights-based knowledge, awareness, and training should not be the defence, but rather acknowledged and addressed. Not just in Ireland, but in many countries across Europe.
International human rights bodies have expressed significant concerns regarding the persistent and high levels of violence against women, while violence against disabled women has been framed as a human rights concern. The recent tragic events in Ireland have again shown that gender-based violence is a worldwide epidemic which cannot be ignored anymore. Nor should the fact that disabled women are women too, and we are also subjected to gender-based violence.
Violence against women is defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as “any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or mental harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life”.
In other words, violence against women can take various forms and be perpetrated by everyday contacts such as: intimate partners, family members, employers, service providers, law enforcement, educators, strangers, etc. According to the Women Enabled International (WEI) Fact Sheet on the ‘Right of Women and Girls with Disabilities to be Free from Gender-Based Violence’, disabled women are at least two to three times more likely than non-disabled women to experience gender-based violence in various spheres; are likely to experience abuse over a longer period of time; and experience both the same forms of gender-based violence, as well as unique forms of violence as a result of our disability. Some of the distinct forms of gender-based violence that disabled women face due to our disabilities include: sexual abuse or purposefully substandard care by a caregiver; withholding of medication or an assistive device; control of sensory devices; restriction of communication devices; denial of necessities like food, toileting, or grooming; financial control; violence in long-term care institutions; forced sterilization, contraception, or abortion; guardianship and other formal or informal deprivation of decision-making power; enforced isolation; and compounded forms of gender-based violence (WEI Fact Sheet). These facts are confirmed by international research which show that disabled women are at a higher risk than other women to experience violence and for longer durations than non-disabled women, as well as a wider range of violence, most of which occur at home and partners and/or caregivers are usually the perpetrators. Furthermore, in October 2020 the Covid-19 Disability Rights Monitor report emphasized the dramatic increase in gender-based violence against disabled women and girls including rape, sexual assault, and harassment at the hands of enforcement authorities or family members during the pandemic.
In Ireland, despite increasing number of studies at international level, violence against disabled women remains largely invisible and there is limited data on this topic. It would not be surprising if Irish studies would find various forms of violence and abuse similar to those reported in international research. In order to have greater understanding, knowledge, protection, public awareness and measures to end this violence, we must provide platforms and encourage disabled women to come forward, empower them to break the ice, support them in doing so, and provide access to reporting and /or prosecuting violence if decided to do so. Hence, emphasis must be put on the role of lived experience as a source of knowledge, which is shared by the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) itself and the philosophy of the disabled people’s movement, so vividly reflected in its rallying call, “Nothing About Us Without Us”.
Ireland ratified the CRPD in 2018. The human rights approach, which is both driven and supported by the CRPD, encompasses the right of disabled women to live free from violence, and to prosecute the violence they experience. Gender-based violence against disabled women is, therefore, the outcome of the violation of the right to freedom from violence and access to justice as called for by CRPD’s Articles 6 on Women and Girls with Disabilities, 13 on Access to Justice, and 16 on Freedom from Exploitation, Violence and Abuse. The analysis of how these three Articles of the CRPD interplay and complement each other, and of how the right to access to justice and to be free from violence stated by them have materialized in the lives of disabled women in Ireland and many other countries, would be vital for the development of recommendations for law and policy reform in line with the CRPD, which in turn would be of use within support services and the justice system. In addition, these would be also key in understanding violence, and empowering disabled women in claiming their rights to justice as human rights holders.
Furthermore, the cultural implications of how we understand personhood, dignity, self-worth, and value in or within our societies, shape our ways of framing concepts like gender and disability within our societies, and the construction of violence around these concepts and their intersection. Thus, when we talk about gender-based violence, we have to consider everybody, and not just victims and perpetrators. We have to consider how women are involved as well, and the kind of role they play in producing or reproducing gender-based violence.
In conclusion, there are a number of dynamics to be considered when discussing gender-based violence within a given community or society. Ending the widespread violence against disabled women and ensuring that they have access to justice when subjected to violence, calls for new research taking into account all the complex forms, contexts and approaches creating and legitimising this violence.
Learn more about the Disability Advocacy Research Europe (DARE) project here DARE Website