Overlooked: ‘Women with disabilities neglected’

Around 5m persons with disabilities live in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has the lowest female labour force participation in South Asia with women with disabilities facing even greater barriers in the cooperate world.

This was highlighted by the Director Advocacy and EVAWG alliance, Aurat Foundation Rabeea Hadi at the first South Asia Conference on the Role of Women with Disabilities in Implementation of Sustainable Development Goals.

She stressed that the issue of women with disabilities is not just as a human rights issue, but also a challenge for the country to progress economically. “For women, there is double discrimination if she has a physical disability,” Hadi said adding  that the reason for the lack of access to redress and real progress towards enacting a comprehensive legislation for women with disabilities is the absence of their parliamentary representation.

A documentary played during the conference said that around 5 million persons with disabilities live in Pakistan, but the data did not indicate the total number of women.

Chairman Senate Raza Rabani in his address  to women with disabilities said that it is sad to say that we have become an insensitive society, and so we fail to realize the issues of minorities and person with special needs.  “We spend millions and billions to construct buildings, hotels, roads, metro buses, but what about building ramps for persons with disabilities which does not  take much money – thus it is not matter  of money but matter of insensitivity,” he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 24^th, 2016.