"In line with several critical areas under thematic review at the High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development in 2017, this brief underlines the need to mainstream disability into all efforts to achieve gender equality and women’s empowerment (SDG 5); highlights key issues for ending poverty (SDG 1) and ensuring healthy lives (SDG 3) for women and girls with disabilities; and calls for closing data gaps on gender and disability"
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development provides global opportunity and obligation to work towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for all women and girls, and address the rights and demands of women with disabilities as a matter of priority. This brief underlines the need to mainstream disability into all efforts to achieve gender equality and women’s empowerment (SDG 5); highlights key issues for ending poverty (SDG 1) and ensuring healthy lives (SDG 3) for women and girls with disabilities; and calls for closing data gaps on gender and disability.
The brief provides the following at a glance facts about women and girls with disabilities:
One in five women live with a disability globally
An estimated one in four households has a person with disabilities
Women are more likely than men to become disabled throughout the course of their lives
Women comprise up to three-quarters of persons with disabilities in low and middle-income countries
Prevalence of disability is higher among marginalised populations and people in rural areas.
This report argues that unless governments and policymakers pay more attention to employment, and its links to poverty, the campaign to make poverty history will not succeed, and the hope for gender equality will founder on the reality of women’s growing economic insecurity. It makes the case for an increased focus on women’s informal employment as a key pathway to reducing poverty and strengthening women’s economic security. It provides the latest available data on the size and composition of the informal economy and compares national data on average earnings and poverty risk across different segments of the informal and formal workforces in six developing countries and one developed country to show the links between employment, gender and poverty. It looks at the costs and benefits of informal work and their consequences for women’s economic security. Finally, it provides a strategic framework for how to promote decent work for women informal workers, and shows why strong organisations of workers in the informal economy are vital to effective policy reforms
