Representatives of women from Latin America and the Caribbean held the First Regional Meeting of Women with Disabilitiesto propose actions that promote the active participation of this social group in high-level discussion spaces.
The meeting is part of the Regional Exchange Forum, developed in person and virtually with representatives from 30 countries, in the hotel facilitiesfrom Boca Chica.
According to the document, at the meeting of women with disabilities, the women demanded to break down the barriers that prevent them from accessing health, including sexual and reproductive health, work, education, participation in politics, justice, recreation and culture.
Can read: How many vacation days does a domestic worker get?
“Women with disabilities experience multiple disadvantages, being excluded due to their gender and their physical condition,” says the text, which adds that they are at least two or three times more likely than other females to experience violence, either by their families, partners, caregivers and institutions.
The event, the communication indicates, began with the words of the Christina Francis, Vice President of the Latin American Network of Non-Governmental Organizations of Persons with Disabilities (Riadis), who asked the States to support more the issue of human rights so that direct and indirect discrimination against disabled women can be curbed.
About 1 billion people, 15% of the world’s population, live with some type of disability.
Of these figures, men represent 12% and women 19.2%.
Women with disabilities, the document maintains, are more likely to suffer from adverse socioeconomic outcomes, such as less education, worse health outcomes, lower levels of employment, and higher rates of poverty.
