Sir,
Gender roles are affected by age, race, class, disability, ethnicity and religion. In the struggle for equality people with disabilities face many obstacles. Although men and women are subject to discrimination because of their disabilities, but gender based assumptions and expectations generally place women with disabilities at a disadvantage. Women with disabilities often face multiple discriminations and are often disadvantaged. The number of people with disability in India is 70 million out if which 12.6 million are males and 9.3 million are females. Disability includes various physical and mental impairments that can hamper or reduce a person’s ability to carry out his day to day activities,which can be categorised as mobility and physical impairment, vision disability, hearing disability, cognitive disability, psychological disorders, brain disability. Women in India are struggling for their rights and women with disabilities are seen as a burden on their families. Women with disabilities require protection against various challenges face by them in day to day life-marriage, sexuality, family and reproductive rights, employment and health, education, exploitation and abuse. Many schemes and provisions have helped women with disabilities achieve what they could not have acquired. The state disability pension scheme also known as integrated social security scheme in the State of Jammu and Kashmir which is administered by Social Welfare Department. Employment is a key factor in the empowerment and inclusion of people with disabilities.
They remain undereducated, unemployed, underemployed and poor especially women. So there is a need to create economic independence for people with disabilities and design appropriate employment opportunities such as home based income generation programmes, suitable work environment for the disabled women to operate without barriers, initiate private agencies and NGO’s to market goods and services produced by disabled women. The Governments target to convert 4800 key buildings, all international airports, 75 railway stations, public transport buses and public centric websites into disabled friendly services by July next year is a major step for providing rights and privileges to ‘divyang’.
Yours etc…
Diksha Nargotra
M. Phil Scholar
Deptt. of Sociology
University of Jammu
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