This poster shows 6 squares alternating in yellow and white. The poster shows the Pacific Disability Forum, Transforming Communities for Inclusion, and CBM logos.
The poster reads:
Care, power and rights: an intersectional lens
Feminist engagement with the ‘care agenda’ has often focused on the uneven distribution of unpaid and underpaid care, largely performed by women and girls
An intersectional approach shows that care can also be a site of power, control, risk, and rights denial for persons with disabilities
Women and girls with psychosocial and intellectual disabilities, children, and older persons with disabilities face particularly high risks of harm masked as care, including in their homes, institutions, and health and social service settings
Because of intersectional discrimination, the experiences of women with disabilities who provide support and care are also often not considered when care policies and programs are designed or delivered
There is no trade‑off between gender justice and disability justice. Both must be realized together.
Rights attach to people, not to the role of ‘caregiver’ – which may include family and community members, paid workers, professionals, service providers, and institutions.
Support services enable rights. Care must not override them.
Care without rights can cause harm, even when well-intentioned
Strengthening support services to realise rights
Meeting the needs of all women, girls, and persons with disability means getting behind rights-based support services in accordance with Article 19 of the CRPD, including:
- Support services that enable choice, autonomy, and legal capacity
- Support services that enable participation and contribution, not segregation
- Community-based support services, not institutionalized care
- Leadership and accountability of persons with disabilities and their organisations.
Addressing gender inequities in the care agenda requires rights-based reform of support services and systems.
This rights-based approach is critical as it:
- Centres gender, disability and other human rights of all persons in care relationships, ensuring that autonomy, will and preferences of persons with disabilities are not overridden
- Contrasts to framing around the giving and receiving of care which can subtly lead to competition and prioritization between caregivers/care-receivers and their needs – often rights of persons with disabilities due to power imbalances
- ensures solutions will be rights-compliant and transformative
A rights-based approach recognizes:
- All persons with disabilities (including women with disabilities) have the right to inclusion in the community and the support services and support systems necessary for this
- All women (including women with disabilities) have the right to wellbeing, decent work, and economic security
- Where hardship is experienced by women and girls providing support to family or community members, this is largely driven by a systemic failure to ensure people with disabilities’ right to adequate support services, as well other rights such as social protection – not just distribution of care at individual and household levels
- Support should not become a mere transaction that brings service provider hierarchies within relationships, reinforce stereotyped gendered roles or weakens agency of persons with disabilities
How to approach care
Care can be a meaningful, relational human quality and practice that sustains families and communities. However, care should support relationships, not replace rights.
Read more: