The Guide to Mainstreaming Gender in Public Disability Policies seeks to explore how to effectively include women and girls with disabilities in different areas of life, often overlooked in public policies, and to offer guidance to policy makers and third-sector activists on the topic. The main threads throughout the guide are two benchmark United Nations treaties: CEDAW and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), in addition to the 2nd Manifesto on the Rights of Women and Girls with Disabilities in the European Union – A toolkit for activists and policymakers, adopted by the General Assembly of the European Disability Forum in May 2011.
The guide has 11 chapters covering a number of themes including accessibility, independent living, training and employment, education, violence and abuse, health and sexual and reproductive rights, among others, under the guiding principles of equality and non-discrimination on the basis of gender or disability.
This guide is undoubtedly of great value as the different chapters bring together the widely-acknowledged experience and expertise in gender affairs and disability of those who collaborated in writing it, either as coordinators for each chapter or as experts and resource persons supporting the coordinators. The methodology, based on an exchange of different viewpoints on one single reality, enabled us at the same time to study the themes in more detail than perhaps many of us had initially anticipated, taking a new approach based on the intersection of gender and disability which has, until now, been largely unaddressed.
Ana Peláez Narváez
Member of the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
CERMI Commissioner for Gender Affairs