Loud, Proud and Prosperous! Report on the Mobility International USA International Symposium on Microcredit for Women with Disabilities

[Excerpt] MIUSA designed the International Symposium on Microcredit for Women with Disabilities in response to recommendations from women leaders with disabilities at WILD, at the Symposium in Beijing, and from our own experience with US-based international development programs. It seemed apparent that economic empowerment of women with disabilities was not high on any agenda – international aid agencies, development organizations, women’s programs, or even disability rights movements. Women with disabilities expressed that they – women with disabilities – would need to take leadership in this area, and that they needed particular knowledge and skills to be effective as leaders in this area

Leadership Development for Women with Disabilities: Key Issues and Strategies in Leadership Training and Successful Participation in Microcredit Programs

[Excerpt] In 1998 Mobility International USA (MIUSA) and the International Disability Exchange and Studies(IDEAS) 2000 Project awarded a fellowship funded by the U.S. National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR) to conduct a research project that would aim to examine questions of leadership development for women with disabilities, using data collected at MIUSA’s 1998 International Symposium on Microcredit for Women with Disabilities. In response to the recommendations made at the 1997 Women’s Institute on Leadership and Disability, MIUSA organized and hosted the first International Symposium on Microcredit for Women with Disabilities held from August 29 to September 8, 1998 in Eugene, Oregon., at which 13 women leaders with disabilities from developing countries met with US based international development organizations and experts on microcredit to improve access of women with disabilities to microcredit programs. The data for this research was collected from the attendees of the Symposium on Microcredit

Violence against pregnant women with disabilities

Background Each year, violence is perpetrated against 1.5 million US women, of whom 324,000 are pregnant. Violence in pregnancy has adverse effects on maternal and infant health. Although there are 4.7 million childbearing age women with disabilities, and their pregnancy rates are growing, there is very little information about violence against pregnant women with disabilities. Objectives The study questions are: Are there differences in pre- and in-pregnancy violence experiences of women with and without disabilities? Is disability a significant predictor of pre- and in-pregnancy violence against women? Methods The study uses data from the 2009 Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS) from Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The study conducts χ 2 -tests and multivariate analyses of violence experiences. Results Pregnant women with disabilities experience more violence than those without. Disability is a significant violence predictor. The number and types of stress sources significantly affect the likelihood of violence. Poor health behaviors also contribute to the likelihood of violence. Conclusion There is a need to reduce violence against pregnant women particularly those with disabilities. Effective interventions require information about causality which can be established through analysis of primary data. Future studies should collect and analyze household level data. Care providers can contribute information by monitoring, recording, and reporting stress types, levels, and violence especially among pregnant women with disabilities

Doing Business in Tigray: Case Studies of Women Entrepreneurs with Disabilities in Ethiopia

[From Preface] The ILO Technical Cooperation Project, Developing Entrepreneurship among Women with Disabilities , is being implemented in Ethiopia by the Ethiopian Federation of Persons with Disabilities (EFPD) and the Tigray Disabled Veterans Association (TDVA). Funded by the Government of Ireland, the objective of the project is to devise a strategy for developing entrepreneurship among women with disabilities in Ethiopia, in an urban area - the city of Addis Ababa, and a rural area - Tigray Region, which can be replicated in other regions of the country and in other countries of the world. The project aims to promote economic empowerment among women with disabilities and women with disabled dependants, by providing training in micro-enterprise skills, arranging access to vocational skills training opportunities and credit, and supporting the women in starting a business activity or developing an existing one. It also seeks to increase the capacity of the EFPD and the TDVA to manage and sustain the new programme of training and support for its disabled women members

Economics of Disability Research Report #5: Economic Outcomes of Working-Age People with Disabilities over the Business Cycle – an Examination of the 1980s and 1990s

We examine the rate of employment and the household income of the working-age population (aged 25-61) with and without disabilities over the business cycles of the 1980s and 1990s using data from the March Current Population Survey and the National Health Interview Survey. In general, we find that while the employment of working-age men and women with and without disabilities exhibited a procyclical trend during the 1980s business cycle, this was not the case during the 1990s expansion. During the 1990s, the employment of working-age men and women without disabilities continued to be procyclical, but the employment rates of their counterparts with disabilities declined over the entire 1990s business cycle. Although increases in disability transfer income replaced a significant fraction of their lost earnings, the household income of men and women with disabilities fell relative to the rest of the population over the decade

Contraceptive choices for women with learning disabilities

‘Contraceptive choices for women with learning disabilities’ is an Open University research project, supported by a grant from Open Society Foundations (Grant No: OR2014-12989). This inclusive project set out to explore women’s contraceptive decision-making and sought to include women with mild to moderate learning disabilities as well as women with high support needs. Between December 2014 and April 2015 we interviewed 19 women living in several locations across the United Kingdom

Doing Business in Addis Ababa: Case Studies of Women Entrepreneurs with Disabilities in Ethiopia

[From Preface] The ILO Technical Cooperation Project, Developing Entrepreneurship among Women with Disabilities , is being implemented in Ethiopia by the Ethiopian Federation of Persons with Disabilities (EFPD) and the Tigray Disabled Veterans Association (TDVA). The project represents a new approach to technical cooperation by the ILO in the field of disability, an approach that is innovative and flexible, based on partnership with local non-governmental organizations of persons with disabilities, and designed and implemented in close consultation with training providers, micro-finance institutions, and national and local government authorities. The ultimate goal is the development of an effective strategy by which women with disabilities can optimise their incomeearning potential and escape from poverty

A Guide to Hiring Women with Disabilities

[Excerpt] Census Bureau data from 2013 show that 12.6 percent of the U.S. population has some form of disability, although estimates of the proportion of the population living with a disability may vary depending on the definition of the term disabled. In 2014, working-age (16-64 years old) women with disabilities made up 1.5 percent of the workforce even though they were nearly 4 percent of the U.S. working age population. These women represent a critical source of untapped labor force talent. In 2014, seven in ten working-age individuals with disabilities were not in the labor force, compared with about two in ten working-age individuals with no disability. In addition to facing persistently low employment, women with disabilities often face difficulties accessing adequate housing, health and education; unequal hiring and promotion standards; and unequal pay

Is There a Disability Gap in Employment Rates in Developing Countries?

This paper examines differences in employment rates between persons with and without disabilities in 15 developing countries using the World Health Survey. We find that people with disabilities have lower employment rates than persons without disabilities in nine countries. Across countries, disability gaps in employment rates are more often found for men than women. The largest disability gap in employment rates is found for persons with multiple disabilities. For countries with a disability gap, results from a logistic decomposition suggest that observable characteristics of persons with/without disabilities do not explain most of the gap

Voices of girls with disabilities in rural Iran

This paper investigates the interaction of gender, disability and education in rural Iran, which is a relatively unexplored field of research. The responses of 10 female students with disabilities from Isfahan indicated that the obstacles they faced included marginalization, difficulties in getting from home to school, difficulties within the school building itself, and discrimination by teachers, classmates and school authorities. The data collected for the study contain a wide range of conservative gendered discourses, and show how traditional gender beliefs interact with disability to aggravate the problems faced in education by young women with disabilities. It is hoped that the findings will raise awareness among policy-makers of the many formidable obstacles that make it difficult for young women with disabilities to achieve their full potential in education