Disabled women are at greater risk of suffering violence, reports Inmujeres

From the editorial

Newspaper La Jornada
Saturday February 18, 2023, p. eleven

Women and girls with disabilities often experience double discrimination: that of gender and that related to disability, a circumstance that places them at greater risk of suffering violence, abandonment, mistreatment or exploitation, establish data from the Documentation Center of the National Institute of Women (Inwomen).

The National Survey on the Dynamics of Household Relations (Endireh 2021) reports that among those aged 15 and over, there are 22 million with disabilities or limitations, where a high proportion of older women with some type of limitation is located.

The survey showed that 16.3 million women aged 15 and over with disabilities or limitations have suffered an incident of violence at some point in their lives and 9.8 million in the previous 12 months to data collection.

The above means a prevalence of violence of 74.4 percent (75.1 percent among those who live with some type of limitation and 72.6 percent among those who have some type of disability) throughout life, as well as 44.5 percent in the year prior to the survey (45.7 percent among women with limitations and 41.5 percent among those with a disability).

The Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, an expert body that oversees the application of the convention on the subject in the states parties, has warned that women with disabilities face more difficulties and barriers than men with disabilities and also greater disadvantages relative to the general population of their own gender.

Underestimation

The Inmujeres reports that there is probably an underestimation of violence against women and girls with disabilities and limitations in the surveys, due to the fact that on some occasions they cannot answer the questionnaires directly, with which the real violence may be higher than the captured by the survey.

However, with respect to the rest of women, violence against them is almost 8 percentage points higher in prevalence throughout life and 3.1 points in the last year.

In four types of violence –physical, psychological, sexual and patrimonial–, those who live with some disability or limitation have a higher prevalence. Throughout their lives, 58.2 percent have experienced psychological aggression, 44.6 percent physical violence, 48.7 percent sexual, and 34.9 percent economic or patrimonial.