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Women are generally discriminated due to gender bias but disabled women face compound discrimination by being both women and disabled. Isolation and confinement based on culture and traditions, attitudes and prejudices often affect disabled women more than men. Some societies go so far as to assign fault to a mother who gives birth to a disabled child, especially so if the mother is a disabled woman. Disabled women and men can experience different kinds of attitudes based on gender discrimination. While men are still seen as the major breadwinners and leaders of society, a disabled man, considered "less of a man", won’t conform to that stereotype. Similarly, a disabled woman won’t conform to the feminine stereotype of wife, partner or mother and some lose the right to keep their children.
In these cases women in general are more vulnerable and marginalized in any crisis, they are double cursed if disabled.
Despite their significant numbers, women and girls with disabilities, especially in the India remain hidden and silent, their concerns unknown and their rights overlooked. Throughout the region, in urban and rural communities alike, they have to face the major problem of triple discrimination by society in general not only because of their disabilities, but also because they are female and poor. Prejudice prevails even within each of the three categories. Among women, the woman with a disability is seen as inferior, and even among other people with disabilities she is not their equal. They are forced into being among the most isolated and marginalized and are the poorest of people, leaving them at increased risk of ill health. They are doubly discriminated due to disability & gender.
Women in poorer communities, and particularly those in the developing countries, appear to be more vulnerable to disability. It is seen that disabled women between 15 and 44 age group suffer more from ill-health caused by too many pregnancies, inadequate post-natal health and medical care, and poor nutrition, all of which put them at greater risk of disability.
Women with disability have minimum access to education, employment, health care, mobility aids and transport.
Many disabled people, especially elderly disabled women, lead isolated lives –unable to go out of their own homes or even move around adequately inside them. In most countries, at least two-thirds of disabled people are unemployed. Disabled women find it four times harder than disabled men to get work. Access to communication and information, especially for those with visual, hearing or learning impairments, is limited.
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