Our Theory of Change

We identified 5 changes we aim to bring about over the next 5 years to make progress toward our broader vision of a world where the human rights and inherent dignity of women, girls, and gender-diverse people with disabilities are fully realized and recognized. These changes target a range of actors—women, girls, and gender-diverse people with disabilities; mainstream human rights and gender and disability rights actors; duty-bearers charged with developing and implementing human rights obligations; donors, media, and other key changemakers; and us at WEI.

• Women, girls, and gender-diverse people with disabilities are increasingly activated and sustainably organized to advocate for their rights and well-being.
• Key changemakers, including donors and media, see, recognize, and value women, girls, and gender-diverse people with disabilities for their experiences, culture, needs, and expertise.
• Key stakeholders increasingly understand how to and are invested in advocating for the rights and well-being of women, girls, and gender-diverse people with disabilities and have become sustained partners in efforts to realize these rights.
• Human rights standards continue to be developed and are increasingly being implemented on the ground in a way that is responsive to the needs and priorities of local communities of women, girls, and gender-diverse people with disabilities.
• Women Enabled International has developed into a sustainable and resilient organization that can grow and innovate in a manner consistent with our values and accountable to the diversity, priorities, and needs of the broader global community of women, girls, and gender-diverse people with disabilities.

Our Strategic Lines

Our Strategic Lines capture the broader ways we will work to realize these changes, identifying the priorities for allocating our resources, our focus, and our time. These lines will guide our work plans for the next five years and enable our collaborations with other movements, organizations and partners.

These 7 strategic lines will allow us to effect the changes we want to see.

• Support networks of women, girls, and gender-diverse people with disabilities to influence local, regional, and global agendas through an intersectional disability lens.
• Strengthen the capacity of women, girls, and gender-diverse people with disabilities to advocate for their rights and well-being, guided by disability justice and intersectional feminist principles and ways of working.
• Center the voices and lived realities of women, girls, and gender-diverse people with disabilities, with a particular emphasis on the experiences of those who are multi-marginalized, to bring greater awareness and visibility to issues impacting rights and well-being at these intersections, informed by disability justice and intersectional feminism.
• Strengthen the capacity of key stakeholders – including civil society organizations, UN agencies, philanthropic organizations, humanitarian, socio-economic development actors, private sector – to promote and support meaningful gender and disability inclusion, with a particular emphasis on multi-marginalized people with disabilities, informed by disability justice and intersectional feminism.
• Advocate for continued development of human rights standards that are responsive to the needs and lived realities of women, girls, and gender-diverse people with disabilities, with a particular emphasis on multi-marginalized people with disabilities.
• Support the on-the-ground implementation of human rights obligations informed by disability justice and intersectional feminism.
• Strengthen organizational governance, infrastructure, processes, systems, and relationships necessary to sustain and grow the organization’s reach and impact, retain and support existing staff, attract diverse new talent (with a particular emphasis on attracting multi-marginalized staff at all levels of the organization), and foster collective care and well-being.

Our Organizational Values

Our set of core beliefs set the tone for internal and external interactions, fuel our decision-making, and communicate what is important to WEI to complete our mission.

• Disability Justice: Our work is rooted in a disability justice framework that foregrounds intersectionality and systemic barriers and recognizes the power of the collective while centering the voices and lived experiences of those most impacted. Recognizing that multi-marginalized people have historically been excluded from disability and gender movements, our work is shaped by their realities.
• Intersectional Feminism: We adhere to intersectional feminist principles and recognize our privilege as a Global North-based organization. In doing so, we aim to share power and be collaborative, transparent, and accountable while caring for ourselves and others. We recognize the multiple identities women, girls, and gender-diverse people with disabilities hold and how that impacts the design of strategies to advance their human rights. We are also committed to making the feminist movement a disability-inclusive movement.
• Community: We believe in the power of movements and strive to support a safe, sustainable, and inclusive community of women, girls, and gender-diverse people with disabilities. Recognizing the value of disabled leadership, we aim to promote our voices being heard by sharing our collective power, creating visible advocacy spaces, or leading from behind.
• Accountability: We are accountable to the communities and movements we are a part of, and we strive to hold those in positions of power accountable for recognizing and realizing disability justice and human rights.
• Respect & Dignity: We understand and practice respect for everyone by recognizing the equal value and inherent dignity of every human being.

Our Core Tactics

We use a range of cross-cutting tactics to advance our strategic priorities.

• Advocacy and Accountability: With a particular emphasis on global human rights and political spaces, we advocate for the development of laws, policies, and practices necessary to give full effect to the rights of women, girls, and gender-diverse people with disabilities and to hold States and other actors to account for their human rights commitments.
• 360 Capacity Strengthening: We work to ensure that the full range of actors who have a role to play in promoting rights at the intersection of gender and disability have the information and tools they need to effectively integrate an intersectional gender and disability lens.
• Movement Building and Cross-Movement Collaboration: We nurture and support the growth and sustainability of networks of women, girls, and gender-diverse people with disabilities at the national, regional, and global levels. We further connect these growing intersectional movements with other movements to ensure that feminist disabled leaders have a seat at the table in conversations that matter to our global community.
• Bridge Building and Facilitating Access to Power: We prioritize and support the direct participation and leadership of gender and disability advocates in key decision-making spaces. We build connections between feminist advocates with disabilities and the forums where their voices are most needed to inform the development of laws, policies, and programs.
• Strategic Communications: We leverage the use of digital and traditional media and other tools to center the voices, lived experiences, and leadership of the global community of feminists with disabilities; amplify the impact of our work and disseminate good practices and replicable strategies for strengthening gender and disability inclusion; and ensure that the tools and resources we develop are fully accessible and widely available.
• Research and Documentation: We document the lived experiences of women, girls, and gender-diverse people with disabilities and conduct landscape and trend analyses to (1) better understand and build the body of research on these lived experiences; (2) develop recommendations for laws, policies, and practices that are responsive to these lived experiences and hold actors accountable for abuses; and (3) inform the priorities we set and projects we develop.
• Twin-track Approach for Inclusion of Structurally Excluded Groups: We ensure that our ways of working are inclusive of women, girls, and gender-diverse people with disabilities who may face further structural exclusion due to race, indigenous status, age, sexual orientation or gender identity, or other identities. In addition to making sure that multi-marginalized people with disabilities are integrated into all our work, we also develop programs and activities that specifically center these multi-marginalized communities.

Our Priority Issues

Within our Strategic Lines, we will prioritize 6 key issues impacting human rights and justice at the intersection of gender and disability over the coming 5 years.

Disability and gender often interact with other potentially marginalized identities, including race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and other intersecting characteristics. Multi-marginalized people with disabilities face increased barriers to realizing their fundamental rights. Across each of these key issues, WEI aims to uplift and prioritize the voices and experiences of multi-marginalized women and gender-diverse people with disabilities.

• Sexual and reproductive health and rights: Women, girls, and gender-diverse persons with disabilities have sexual and reproductive health needs and are just as likely to be sexually active as their non-disabled peers. Yet harmful stereotypes around gender and disability often lead to denials of accessible and inclusive sexual and reproductive health information and services, and inaccurate and harmful presumptions around sexuality, which impede the enjoyment of sexual and reproductive health and rights by persons with disabilities.
• Gender-based violence: Women, girls, and gender-diverse persons with disabilities experience heightened rates of gender-based violence than their peers without disabilities. They are likely to experience abuse over a longer period of time, resulting in more severe injuries, as well as unique forms of violence because of their disability. Women and gender-diverse people with disabilities also experience distinct barriers to escaping such violence and seeking justice.
• Community-based living and preconditions for living independently in the community: People with disabilities—and particularly women and gender-diverse people with disabilities face barriers that infringe on their right to live independently in the community. This places them at greater risk of institutionalization, which in turn leads to an increased risk of a range of rights violations, including gender-based violence. Additional structural barriers—including gender gaps in access to education and employment—contribute to heightened rates of poverty for people with disabilities, which can limit access to accessible and affordable housing in the community. The lack of available, gender-inclusive, and culturally competent community-based services and government support creates additional barriers to living in a community setting.
• Humanitarian crises: All too often, crisis preparedness and response fail to plan for and include women, girls, and gender-diverse people with disabilities. Crises, including displacement due to conflict or natural disasters, contribute to heightened rates of poverty, gender-based violence, and inaccessible and insecure living environments that perpetuate exclusion. Climate change is also exacerbating health complications for women, girls, and gender-diverse people with disabilities, including and especially during pregnancy and the postnatal period.
• Feminist disabled leadership and inclusion in key movement and decision-making spaces: As experts on their own lived experiences, women, girls, and gender-diverse people with disabilities need to have a meaningful seat at the table on issues that impact them—in government, in peace negotiations, in global, regional, and local advocacy spaces, and in technical discussions on programs and policy. Yet a range of barriers—harmful stereotypes about capacity, inaccessibility of decision-making spaces, lack of gender- and disability-responsive budgeting and planning for inclusion—inhibit meaningful inclusion in decision-making spaces.
• Cross-movement solidarity: As anti-rights initiatives proliferate around the globe, it is increasingly essential to strengthen relationships with allied human rights and justice actors beyond the gender and disability movement. Bolstering cross-movement solidarity fosters collaboration and ensures the inclusion of multi-marginalized people with disabilities across movements. Gender and disability rights and justice are integral to the realization of the full range of human rights, and together we can deepen our impact, especially in the face of a rising anti-rights agenda.