Election 2019 – Women with disabilities
WHAT ARE THE PARTICULAR ISSUES FOR WOMEN WITH DISABILITIES?
Poverty & Economic Security:
• Forty-five percent of people with disabilities live in or near relative povertyi . This is 2.5 times the poverty rate of non-disabled people and double the OECD average (22%).
• Those with mild to moderate core activity restrictions due to their disability are in the 90% of people with disabilities who are not eligible for NDIS support packages. They are increasingly likely to be on Newstart Allowance rather than the Disability Support Pension. At the same time they are still likely to have higher costs of living than non-disabled women.
The Royal Commission:
• Government should commit itself to fully fund and support the Royal Commission into violence, abuse and neglect of people with disabilities, and to take a gendered approach to recognise the impact of gender and disability discrimination on women’s self-confidence and self-esteem, in turn affecting their ability to bring their grievances to the commissioners. The Royal Commission should be allowed to run over full election cycle at a minimum.
National Disability Insurance Scheme:
• Women with disabilities are only 38% of participants in the NDIS. The agency needs to show leadership in employment of people with disabilities, including at all levels achieved by meeting a quota of 51% for employment of people with disabilitiesii (this is not to include people who are the primary carers of people with disabilities). There needs to be a requirement for training of employees in human rights (in particular CRPD and CEDAW), the social model of disability, and the impact of violence abuse and neglect on functioning and activities of daily living (ADLs). Changes must be made to implement functional assessments in planning and review, in order to move away from reliance on diagnoses, so that outcomes are closer to a social model that is rights based.
• Intersectionality also needs to be better acknowledged in assessment and review, as the percentage of people with disabilities with two or more disabilities is high. Estimates of the number of people with cognitive impairment who have a dual disability with a psychiatric disorder varies from 9% to 39%.iiiivv
Housing initiatives:
• There is a need for funding to be made available for a further increase in supply of social and public housing to be matched by states and territories through national housing programs. All housing should be accessible and sustainable in design to minimise heating/cooling costs. All new Class 1A (private) dwellings should have minimum levels of accessibility as outlined in the National Dialogue on Universal Housing Design.vi
Employment:
• People with disabilities are more than twice as likely to be unemployed as the non-disabled (10% versus 5%vii). Women with disabilities face greater discrimination in the open employment market. Despite a greater proportion of women with disabilities (compared to men with disabilities) having 2 post school qualifications, they are half as likely to have full time work as their male counterparts and twice as likely to have part time work.
• The NDIA needs to reinforce and amplify its employment goal-setting to focus on support for people with disabilities to find and keep a job and have the expectation of a career pathway.
Social Welfare: • The current debt recovery process has unfairly impacted on women with disabilities who have to juggle caring responsibility with job-search obligations. Thirty-two percent of women with disabilities have a primary carer role.viii There is a need for review of the social security system to look at the fairness of the definitions in impairment tables for eligibility to the DSP.
Violence against Women:
• Violence against women with disabilities is an urgent and largely unaddressed issue. The National Plan to Reduce Violence Against Women needs to cover all settings in which violence experienced by women with disabilities occurs.
Emergency Accommodation (Women’s Refuges):
• Funding agreements for Emergency Accommodation should mandate the building of accommodation that meets the accessibility standards necessary to accommodate women with disabilities escaping domestic violence.
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