Rights-based Struggle of Women with Disabilities

Background

The workforce participation rate in Turkey is 49%. The same rate is 29% for women and only 7% for women with disabilities. Women with disabilities face a double disadvantage in literacy as well. While Turkey has 91% literacy rate, 52% of women with disabilities are literate (Souce: OZIDA 2002, TUIK 2010).

Project Goals

• In Ankara, Izmir and Samsun:
  • An inclusive training kit for all the disability groups will be prepared.
  • 60 women with disabilities will benefit from the trainings on the rights of people with disabilities.
  • After the trainings, women with disabilities will organize informative seminars for the community.

Project Results

• With support from Sabanci Foundation, project brochure was prepared and printed.
• A training material for women with disabilities was created with experts.
• With the support of facilitators who are experienced in the field disabilities, 70 women with disabilities raised awareness concerning disability and women rights.
• Women with disabilities informed the public through their activities.
• Participants of the project gathered in the project experience sharing meeting held in Ankara in order to share experiences.

“The participants mainly complained and dramatized their issues at the first phase of the workshops. As the training progressed, they began to realize that discrimination lies at the base of their problems, and that much of what they had experienced was actually a violation of their rights. This was followed by approaches like demanding rights, filing petitions and taking legal measures.”

Facilitator

“The biggest change in me was this: We have disabilities and we live with these conditions, but we really aren’t very aware of our rights. Here, I learned what kind of rights we have. When I saw the struggles of people who dealt with a double disadvantage as both having disability and being woman, I was happy, but also felt I needed to do something. From now on I’m going to become more connected with disability associations, and think about what I can do and how I can be involved.”

Project Beneficiary

“At our first session in Ankara, there was a woman with orthopedic impairments. She had cerebral palsy and was unable to attend the activities every day. When she first came to the workshops, she didn’t even want to talk, she was very uncomfortable. But by the end of the third day, she had shown a quick change, and gave us this feedback: ‘I’m going to go to university. I can do this, because that’s a matter of my mind, and whether I have disabilities or not, I have the right to do this, and I’m going to exercise that right.”

Project Coordinator