Challenges

Women and girls with disabilities face increased risks of several forms of violence compared with those without disabilities. With one in every five women estimated to have a disability, engaging with the specific realities of violence against women and girls with disabilities (VAWGWD) should be a priority. Yet it is often denied, deprioritized or tackled as a separate issue, in part owing to the invisibility, ignorance and stigma connected to disabilities. Recent literature has highlighted a gap in qualitative research through the conceptual frameworks of intersectionality and feminist disability theory in relation to low- and middle-income country contexts, and the importance of research grounded in interventions around VAWGWD (Meyer et al., 2022; SVRI and EQI, 2021). International instruments recognize the importance of a cross-cutting gender and disability perspective and the need for a deeper understanding of this.

Toward a Solution

This synthesis review contributes to this research gap by taking a qualitative, intervention-focused approach to understand the relationship between disability and violence against women and girls. It summarizes key insights and lessons emerging from the United Nations Trust Fund Special Window on ending violence against women and girls with disabilities (hereafter “the Special Window”) portfolio of 22 civil society organization grantees that were funded between 2018 and 2023. These grantees were situated in a wide range of contexts and were also working with women and girls with diverse types of disabilities and facing various forms of violence. In this way, the review also contributes knowledge to the wider sector of ending violence against women and girls, which can help improve programming so that it is both disability-specific and disability-inclusive, and build an evidence base that is driven by current practitioners and Global South realities.

Five interlinked themes emerged from the analysis and synthesis process and were used to structure this synthesis review.

• Prioritizing collaborations to address VAWGWD: Collaboration emerged as a crucial element of both the success of VAWGWD programming and working at the challenging intersections of gender, disabilities and violence. Collaborations included both formal partnerships as part of applying for the grant, and new and informal collaborations emerging in the process of project implementation.
• Enabling mindset shifts around VAWGWD: Grantee’s experiences and learnings highlighted the key role of grantees in raising awareness of VAWGWD, working more intensively to transform existing mindsets in different domains, supporting paradigm shifts in understanding disabilities, and producing and disseminating knowledge for the prevention of VAWGWD.
• Centring the agency and meaningful participation of women and girls with disabilities: The participation of women and girls with disabilities was identified consistently as especially important for the specific intersection between gender, disabilities and violence. Grantees showcased the many different levels at which this took place.
• Engaging with legal and policy systems to address VAWGWD: Engaging with these wider systems and the institutions within them emerged consistently across the portfolio as an essential component of addressing VAWGWD. Grantees offered insights into their engagement with legal and policy systems across a number of social groups, which has the potential to enable others to secure longer-term gains
• Flexible adaption and learning in addressing VAWGWD: Project adaptability can be planned for at the design stage, but also emerges in reaction to unforeseen changes in situations. This emerged as significant for a project’s capacity to address VAWGWD and respond to the specific requirements of diverse groups of women and girls with disabilities.