Tag: feminism

An Interview with Stephanie Ortoleva, Founder of Women Enabled International (November 14th, 2022)

Stories/Lived Experience

Symposium

Author: Dr Ana María Sánchez Rodríguez, MSCA Fellow and Adjunct Assistant Professor of the Assisting Living and Learning (ALL) Institute

Stephanie Ortoleva and Ana Maria Sanchez Rodriguez
Stephanie Ortoleva and Ana María Sánchez Rodríguez

Stephanie Ortoleva, founder of Women Enabled International (WEI) advocates for women and girls with disabilities. She says that, “disabled women are organizing for ourselves because we have found that other movements, whether it’s the women’s rights movement or the disability rights movement, very often don’t include our issues as the key points of their advocacy. Disabled women just aren’t going to be silent anymore” (Ford Foundation, 2020).

In the summer of 2012, I started my research journey as an intern for WEI. WEI wanted to help and join the work on the revision of laws in India and globally. The central issue was violence against women and girls with disabilities. The same year, Stephanie and Hope Lewis published a seminal work on violence against women with disabilities called: Forgotten Sisters – A Report on Violence Against Women with Disabilities: An Overview of its Nature, Scope, Causes and Consequences.

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A Feminist Ethic of Care Can Deliver a Post Pandemic Careful Recovery [i]

Social Lives

Author: Pauline Cullen , Associate Professor Department of Sociology Maynooth University

Pictured Dr Pauline Cullen

“The majority of healthcare workers are women, and both paid and unpaid caring roles mostly fall to women as well. Then there is the additional challenge of increased pressure on the domestic front,” writes campaign group Covid Women’s Voices, a  diverse range of  female healthcare workers, teachers, academics, lawyers and others that observe daily the gendered realities of the pandemic. This group echoes calls from feminist organisations including the National Women’s Council that women’s voices are insufficiently heard during the pandemic.

The facts bear out their lived experience. Ireland ranks 101st in the world for women’s parliamentary representation.   Successive and severe lockdowns have closed schools, childcare and supports for older people and those with disabilities for long periods of time  placing significant burdens on women. Inconceivably, there are  no women on Ireland’s governmental committees on Health and Covid-19.

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