Paper short abstract:

The study focuses on intersectionality and brings to fore that women with disability can face double deprivation of capabilities at a micro, mezzo and macro levels based on primary data collected through in-depth interview of ten women with disability. It was found that there is non-encouragement from a micro and mezzo levels leading to poor conversion of capabilities.

Paper long abstract:

With approximately 2.21 percentage of population from India facing some kind of disability, it has become increasingly important to discuss enhancing capabilities for empowerment through employment. From about 2.68 crore persons with disability, 20 percent have disability in movement, 19 percent are with disability in seeing, while 19 percent are with disability in hearing and 8 percent have multiple disabilities. It has been historically seen that people with disability find it difficult to find productive employment particularly women find it harder and are therefore treated as mostly dependent on someone who is supposedly a wholly-abled near one. The current approach to development defy the norms of human development from a Capabilities approach and does not lead to any kind of independent functioning for the person with disability. The UNHRO (1975) has declared that “Disabled persons have the right to economic and social security and to a decent level of living. They have the right, according to their capabilities, to secure and retain employment or to engage in a useful, productive and remunerative occupation and to join trade unions”. However, the major question comes to the commitment of the implementing members from a human development perspective. Out of 2.68 crore persons with disability, 1.18 crore are women, which accounts for almost 44.03 percent. As discussed above women bear the double burden of disparity being female and disabled. The current study focuses on this intersectionality and proposes to highlight that women with disability face double deprivation of capabilities in terms of commitment at a micro, mezzo and macro levels. As we rapidly progress with technology advancement and more so the intent to have inclusive development, it has to be accepted and explored how a majority of this section of population with disability can attain the functioning through the right set of capabilities offered.

The study is based on primary data collected from the persons with disability. It is an in-depth qualitative study through the interview of ten women with disability with a view to investigate the gaps in capabilities that may lead to a discouraged worker situation for many among them. Utilising the unique stories of the 10 women the study tries to answer following questions.

RO1: To understand the capabilities failure of women with disability in getting any kind of employment.

RO2: To investigate the gaps in capabilities that may be leading to a discouraged worker situation for the disabled persons.

RO4: To understand the disempowering impact of due to capabilities failure and lack of employment.

The study found that employment opportunities are far and few for the women with disability whether sustainable productive self-employment or a remunerative wage-employment. Vocational training and support are there as a result of various policy initiatives at macro levels, however, accessibility to these trainings centres and other ancillary support systems like access to funding is constrained due to non-encouragement from a micro – within the family unit and mezzo levels and subsequently, leads to poor conversion of capabilities in to attainments of value. Therefore, the study proposes that there should be policy measures that create very strong support for women with disability that would convert the inertia of the family as a unit into encouragement through affirmative actions like monetary or other incentives. Post pandemic, it is realised that technology also offers a lot of solutions in this direction.