Women Enabled International is committed to uplifting the experiences and intersectional existence of women and girls with disabilities. Too often, women and girls with disabilities are left out of mainstream conversations around gender while simultaneously suffering similar underrepresentation in discussions on disability. This blog, launched in November 2019, is a challenge to those narrow definitions that position the women’s and disability rights movements as separate, or exclusive to one another. Women with disabilities are women, too. Here’s to Rewriting the Narrative.
Recent posts
WEI publication: Abortion and Disability: Towards an Intersectional Human Rights-Based Approach
Ongoing debates around fetal impairment as a legal basis for abortion act as a wedge issue between the disability rights and reproductive rights movements. Disability rights advocates are concerned that laws that expressly permit abortion on grounds of fetal impairment codify the notion that disabled lives are worth less than…
Visibility and Its Real-World Implications
by Hope Randall In my work as an advocate for greater awareness of the global burden of diarrheal disease and the tools that can help solve it, I’m struck by how illness is so often a proxy for inequitable access to basic needs. There’s even a term for it: “diseases…
40 Years of CEDAW: Keeping Women with Disabilities on the Agenda
by Amanda McRae This week marks the 40th anniversary of the U.N. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). This human rights treaty, to which almost every country has signed on, has helped transform the world by providing a legal framework to ensure the respect,…
A Word of Welcome
by Stephanie Ortoleva Welcome to the Women Enabled International Blog – Rewriting the Narrative with WEI! This is a new space we are launching to showcase the voices, opinions, and stories of women with disabilities and allies championing the rights of women and girls with disabilities worldwide. We hope that…
Women Enabled Takes to the Streets to Demand an End to Period Poverty
October 25, 2019 – On October 19, Women Enabled was honored to join over 30 non-profits, student groups, and community organizations to co-host the DC Period Rally on the United States’ first ever National Period Day! Organized by PERIOD Inc. and Seventh Generation, the DC rally was one of 60…
Women with Disabilities Submission to the Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women: Mistreatment and Violence in Reproductive Health Care, including Facility-Based Childbirth
May 17, 2019 – This submission, intended to inform the Special Rapporteur’s forthcoming report to the U.N. General Assembly, outlines the causes, forms, and consequences of violence and mistreatment against women and girls with disabilities in reproductive health care settings, including childbirth settings. Drawing on examples from several countries, the submission…