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Women with Visual Disabilities and the Women’s Movement
Visually challenged participants at a workshop framed issues almost exclusively through the lens of their personal experiences and understanding of visual disability, while the articulations of the non-disabled participants revealed a more mixed perspective combining their understanding and assumptions about disability and gender in general. With regard to the connections between the women’s movement and disability rights movement, it was felt that being a part of mainstream society, the women’s movement has, with a few exceptions, also invisibilised disability.
The Centre for Women’s Development Studies (CWDS), in collaboration with the All India Confederation of the Blind (AICB), organised an “Interactive Workshop on Creating Bridges between Visually Challenged Young Women and the Women’s Movement: Issues and Concerns” on 25 June 2016 in New Delhi. The workshop was supported by the National Institute of Panjab Studies, Bhai Vir Singh Sahitya Sadan (BVSSS).
The main aim of the workshop was to create a dialogue between women with visual disabilities from different parts of India. Women’s organisations located in Delhi also participated in the workshop. In the absence of a structured engagement between the disability and women’s rights movements, CWDS felt the need to create a platform for exchanging views and perspectives among individuals and groups, who otherwise hardly interact. The idea for the workshop emerged out of AICB’s annual national-level residential intensive training course for young women with visual disabilities. It was hoped that the workshop would open channels of communication for joint advocacy and action by women from different constituencies in the ongoing struggle for a more inclusive gender-just society.
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