Celebrating Women with Disabilities on International Women’s Day

Women are very important and the roles they play in our communities deserve to be celebrated. However, in doing so, women with disabilities who continue to be resolute despite socio-economic challenges they encounter in their day to day lives are often forgotten.

Women with disability, by virtue of being women and having disabilities, face double marginalization. Although concepts such as gender mainstreaming, women empowerment and emancipation form part of our daily policy discourses in Zimbabwe, there is little to show for that when it comes to women with disabilities.

While our society continues to perpetuate negative attitudes and harmful cultural practices against women with disabilities, the government shows no care both in its policies and practices for them.

Evidence abounds on lack of inclusion of women with disabilities in government-related women empowerment projects such as women in mining and women in farming. This consequently perpetuates the vicious cycle of poverty for women with disabilities.

There is therefore, a need for a sober reflection as we celebrate the international women’s day and even the women’s month. Our celebrations can only be valid when we fight for all women in the society to have equal opportunities economically, socially and politically despite their disabilities.

The constitution states that sign language is one of the officially recognized languages of Zimbabwe. However, sign language is not being used at many institutions providing services to members of the public such as hospitals, courts, police stations and educational institutions.

This means that persons with hearing impairment in general and women with hearing impairment in particular experience systematic exclusion and discrimination, notwithstanding that our Constitution prohibits that.

Women with disabilities face serious violations of their sexual and reproductive health rights. In the case of women with hearing impairment, the communication barriers between them and the health practitioners who do not understand sign language leads to the breach of their confidentiality as there would be need for a third person. It may also lead to them being given wrong prescriptions or failing to access the services at all.

Likewise, women with visual impairment face challenges as sexual reproduction health information is usually in inaccessible formats instead of formats such as Braille and Audio.

Women with mental and intellectual impairment face a lot of sexual abuse and offenders are never punished because our law views such women as being not being competent and compellable witnesses. In some cases, women with disabilities are perceived as asexual and in other cases viewed as a cure for HIV.

In both cases, information is not readily made available to them thereby making them susceptible to abuse. Women with disabilities are very vulnerable especially when violence breaks out. Most women with disabilities cannot speedily flee from violent scenes. In the same vein, they can hardly protect themselves from abusive relationships.

Consequently, the MDC as a government will take a holistic approach in resolving such challenges faced by women with disabilities. The MDC government will ensure that women with disabilities enjoy their rights and exercise them fully. Sustainable empowerment projects in both the rural and urban communities will be generated to eliminate economical marginalization.

As a government, the MDC will also establish Disability Resource Centres in all provinces of the nation, but above all make sure information and all infrastructure is accessible to women and all persons with disabilities at large.

The fortitude of women with disabilities in the face of challenges they face gives us the reason to celebrate them in their diversity for being strong in all this.

Happy International Women’s Day to all women, especially to the women with disabilities.

Celebrating International Women’s Day

Denias Mudzingwa

Secretary for People with Disabilities and the Disadvantaged

Movement For Democratic Change