Bringing Gender to the Agenda at the Global Disability Summit!

A photo of WEI’s exhibition booth at the Global Disability Summit. In the photo different people who showed up, some with physical disabilities and mobility devices, some without. They are wearing purple bandanas to show themselves as feminists with disabilities. Some of them are holding cards that read The future of Gender Equality is Inclusive with WEI’s illustrations and logo.

Reflecting on our time at the Global Disability Summit (GDS), Women Enabled International (WEI) connected with vital partner organizations, collaborators, and allies of women with disabilities. However, the Summit underscored a crucial reality: the transformative work of feminists with disabilities and their organizations remains largely invisible on these global platforms. This invisibility at GDS fueled our determination to organize and ensure upcoming spaces meaningfully center our voices.

At GDS, we focused our engagement on organizing with our feminist disability sisters worldwide to bring a crucial gender perspective into the broader disability movement. We also highlighted the critical need for inclusion and bridge-building with people with psychosocial disabilities, emphasizing that they are an integral part of the disability community and must be included in all spaces. We witnessed firsthand the urgent need for increased availability of long-term, core, flexible funding to sustain the essential work being done at the intersection of gender and disability rights.

Read below to learn more about our participation at this important international space, and how we continue pushing forward in this challenging but powerful moment.

Women Enabled International at GDS: Interactive community space for feminists with disabilities & allies. 10 feminist-led orgs engaged. 60+ responses on gender & disability. ~500 solidarity bandanas. Strategic Meeting with 30+ disabled feminist leaders. Co-sponsored 3 events (200+ attendees) on gender & disability issues. Includes events on health equity, SRHR, and addressing stigma/violence.

Showing up as feminists with disabilities

We kicked off the three days of GDS by hosting a strategic meeting of feminists with disabilities and allies, attended by approximately 30 people from civil society and philanthropic organizations. Through the meeting we gained valuable perspective on the current landscape of those working at our intersection. We were able to learn from one another as well as offer and receive valuable insights. Participants also left the meeting with key messages to share in their advocacy throughout GDS, and left with renewed energy to bring gender to the conversation.

The strategic meeting not only confirmed what we already knew — that gender, along with other crucial topics were missing from the Summit — but it also highlighted the urgent need to build bridges and continue to work together to bring other vantage points to this event, and to other spaces and movements.

As a feminist OPD, we started our participation at GDS taking a page from our sisters in Latin America to ensure gender was visible. Latin America and along with other regions from the Global South have been building feminist movements for decades. Feminists have mobilized to guarantee access to safe abortions, to push governments to solve for femicides, as well as advocate to pass legistlation and policy that protect women from violence online. Every March 8th, on International Women’s Day, millions take to the streets to make these demands a reality. They show solidarity in many ways, but we use the color purple to signal to each other, I too am a feminist, I am an ally. Taking a page from this book, we decided to bring that same activist spirit with us to GDS.

We distributed around 500 purple bandanas to women with disabilities who identify themselves as feminists, and we asked allies to join us to ensure gender, if not intentionally included in the conversation, was visible.

Collage of photos of people wearing purple bandanas at GDS. Some people are raising their fists in solidarity, and others are just smiling. On top of the collage there is a white banner that reads Women Enabled International at the Global Disability Summit. The support was strong! Feminists with disabilities showed up and we ran out of bandanas early on our second day! This speaks of the need of intersectionality within the disability community, but also of tangible ways for people to make a statement.

Sharing space

As an organization we are aware of the space we occupy, and that’s why our strategies have centered our joint work with partners, but we knew that was not going to cut it this time. To meet this moment, we needed to use our space wisely!

Our strategy was straight forward, create a space for feminists with disabilities and allies. Our exhibition booth, “The Future of Disability Rights is Feminist: Gender on the Agenda at GDS,” sought to create a community space to convene and meet each other, engage in important conversations, and find a safe environment to gather and be in community.

We wanted to spark conversations and listen to our community and their thoughts around different topics. We posed daily questions focused on the intersection of gender and disability, and asked participants to share their thoughts and insights. The space was vibrant with community responses!

Graphic titled: The future of disability rights is feminist. Different illustrations of people with disabilities posing questions: What does it mean to be feminists with disabilities and allies? Why do we need gender on the agenda in disability spaces?, How can we create a future of disability rights that is feminist? Read full responses in alt-text.

In true WEI fashion, knowing that many organizations did not have a space at GDS to highlight their work and insights, we shared what we had! Ten organizations led by feminists with disabilities and allies, including those who had made GDS commitments that centered gender and disability, took over our exhibition booth at different times throughout the Summit.

These organizations included Transforming Communities for Inclusion, Advocacy for Women with Disabilities Initiative Nigeria, Women Gaining Ground Consortium, Organisation des Femmes Aveugles du Bénin, Association Burundaise pour la Promotion des Droits des Femmes Handicapées, Making it Work, UNFPA, UN Women, ADD International, and Ford Foundation.

Getting the word out!

Even though the official spaces for gender and disability were scarce, we made the most of the opportunities! We fostered conversations, opened up dialogues, and made sure our message got out into the wider GDS spaces.

Our team participated in side events, fireside chats, and other convenings, such as the Civil Society Forum; co-hosted the launch of the report with Missing Billions, Time to Act: Achieving Health Equity for Women with Disabilities; participated in Dismantling Ableism in Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights with Women Gaining Ground, and closed with a joint event with UN Women and UNFPA, Addressing Stigma, Disrimination, and Violence Against Women with Disabilities.

Our interventions were centered around feminist disabled leadership, health equity for women with disabilities, as well as making the case for greater investment at the intersection of gender and disability.

“What gives me hope is that I am seeing an increasing embrace of feminist disability leadership as a way of guiding the work we do within the disability rights and justice spheres and across movements. We are increasingly sharing power, working collectively, embracing the priorities of other movements, ensuring accessibility and inclusivity, promoting the leadership of the most marginalized among us, and holding ourselves accountable for our values.”

— Amanda McRae, Director of Advocacy and Accountability, Women Enabled International

A group of feminists with disabilities and allies at WEI’s Strategy Meeting during the Global Disability Summit in Berlin. Some people are using mobility devices, and some have their fists raised and wearing a purple bandana in solidarity.

GDS also provided an excellent opportunity to deepen our existing relationships and partnerships, while also opening possibilities to connect with new allies, to ignite coallitions with organizations of persons with disabilities and others involved in the disability rights movement.

Where we go from here!

GDS was an important event for bringing attention to disability rights and justice and to galvanize commitments, however there is more we need to do to meet our global moment.

As OPDs and human rights defenders, we are operating within a context of ongoing and increasing backlash against gender and gender-related rights, a human rights crisis, a sudden loss of resources for those working on human rights issues, and a concerning increase on authoritarian regimes around the world. This is also the ecosystem in which GDS took place.

We recognize and honor the huge effort to put together a convening of this magnitude, however it would be a diservice to our community to omit the fact that the Summit was not always a platform for many of the important, albeit uncomfortable, conversations we need to be having at this moment to truly push forward against the backlash on human rights.

We heard from organizations and persons with disabilities from around the world that their requests for participation — through speaking slots in events, and through organizing side events and fireside chats — were denied. This meant that many of the issues most important to them were off the table or only at the margins, including:

• Legal capacity, deinstitutionalization, and the right to live in the community
• Issues impacting other historically excluded and multimarginalized people with disabilities, including indigenous and racialized people with disabilities, people with psychosocial disabilities, Deaf people, and people with intellectual disabilities
• The rise of authoritarianism and the need for cross-movement collaboration and solidarity to address anti-rights and anti-gender, and of course,
• Gender-related issues, including SRHR, GBV, sexuality, and gender identity

“This shouldn’t be a side event; it should be the MAIN event!”
— Magda Szarota, women with disabilities advocate from Poland, at a GDS side event focused on gender-related stigma, discrimination, and violence.

And while yes, women with disabilities were given speaking slots, we need to make sure we are at the decision-making tables, “We have been invited to speak, but not to decide. We were applauded, but not listened to…”, said Ruth Mkutumula, Director of Disabled Women in Africa, during GDS’ Closing Ceremony.

As we reflect upon the things we collectively accomplished at GDS, it will be on us, as activists and advocates within the disability movement, to ensure we are following the disabled leadership of those who exist within multi-marginalized contexts and who have been historically excluded. It is also our collective responsibility to foster the right conditions to affirm we are working in solidarity within disability spaces and across movements. There is no other way forward.