1. Connect2Include. Include2Connect.
When: Thursday, 18 March 2021, 8:00 AM - 9:30 AM EST
RSVP link / Registration: https://itu.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_-l6vmsTrSDOX6RV8B_dq0g
Leaving no one behind in the digital world means ensuring that technology is people-centred. This encompasses that no one is offline due to the lack of connectivity or due to the lack of accessibility of digital information, products, and services. This session will bring attention to the importance of developing appropriate policies, strategies and actions that address the specific needs for the digital inclusion of women and girls, youth, children, persons with disabilities, older persons, Indigenous peoples, and people living in remote areas to achieve true and meaningful universal connectivity, especially when it comes to designing accessible and affordable digital solutions that will impact everyone’s lives and the process of building inclusive digital societies.
2. Barriers to the full and effective participation of women and girls with disabilities
When: Thursday, 18 March 9:00 AM - 10:30 AM EST
RSVP Link / Registration: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMkfumhqTkvHt2H-8ssitvKwGZrSQPQGJUF
The event aims at promoting dialogue on the political participation of women and girls with disabilities and exchanging knowledge and good practices on ways to increase and strengthen their representation in political institutions and elected bodies at the national and local level. The discussion will provide the opportunity to take a closer look at the political participation of women and girls with disabilities through two lenses - the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
Parallel Events
To register for parallel events, sign up at the Eventbrite link here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/ngo-csw65-forum-advocate-registration-tickets-137312871495
1. Is the Way you Think about Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) Ableist? Good Practices for Disability Inclusive SRHR Programmes and Advocacy.
When: 10:30 PM - 12:30 AM EDT on Tuesday, 16 March 2021
Sponsoring Organization: Women Enabled International
Ableism is a term for discrimination against people with disabilities. Across the world, people with disabilities face discrimination when accessing SRHR services. Ableism can manifest in inaccessible physical spaces and information to prejudicial attitudes. Similarly, people with disabilities are often excluded from SRHR advocacy campaigns, which exacerbates their exclusion and the lack of attention to issues such as forced procedures. Join experts on disability rights and inclusion from across the Asia-Pacific region to discuss how ableism manifests in the SRHR field and prevents people with disabilities from realizing their rights and good practices for dismantling these barriers.
2. Women’s Representation in Wales: How gendered is my valley?
When: 4:30 PM - 6:30 PM EDT on Thursday, 18 March 2021
Sponsoring Organization: Wales Assembly of Women
Wales, a small nation within the UK, made waves worldwide in 2003 as the first legislature to achieve 50:50 gender balance with equal members of men and women. Although Wales broke this significant barrier, women are still under-represented in public life and business, paid less than men and more likely than men to be working below the level of their qualifications. The panel which will focus on the experiences of disabled women, women in Welsh sports leadership and elected women in Welsh local government will draw together robust data, analysis and evidence from post-graduate research in Wales to bring fresh perspectives to women’s representation in Wales.
3. Practicing feminist disability rights organizing. Strategies for collective action.
When: 8:30 AM - 10:30 AM EDT on Friday, 19 March 2021
Sponsoring Organization: CREA, Deaf Women Included, Women Spaces Africa, Show Abilities Uganda, Anjali, Women with Disabilities Development Foundation
The event will explore strategies women with disabilities and organizations working at the intersection of feminism and disability rights are implementing to dismantle structural ableism while fighting for gender equality. We will discuss issues activists with disabilities find crucial to advance participation, decision–making, and leadership of women with disabilities and to ensure critical rights issues they face are on the agenda. In particular, we will address the importance of gender-based violence prevention policy reforms, leveraging the CRPD to safeguard the rights of all persons with disabilities, and building cross-movement solidarity in practice.
4. How to Ensure Women’s and Girls' Empowerment, Including those with Disabilities, at all Stages of their Life?
When: 2:30 PM - 4:30 PM EDT on Saturday, 20 March 2021
Sponsoring Organization: DIDEPAS, ETNAD3, Femmes d'Afrique Magazine, François
Women and girls, especially those with disabilities, continue to be left behind in the decision-making process despite all the resolutions adopted after conventions, conferences, and summits of high-level States Parties. Women and girls with and without disabilities are all exposed to the same behavioural and environmental barriers. That fact hinders their full participation in public life on an equal basis with others, as recommended by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), and the 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Participants will discuss all aspects of adversities, including the new constraints that the COVID-19 crisis places on women and girls. All women and girls, without exception, are exposed to disabling conditions that prevent their decision-making in their community. Each participant will provide solutions and recommendations.
5. An Untold Narrative: Immigrant Women with Disabilities
When: 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM EDT on Monday, 22 March 2021
Sponsoring Organization: RespectAbility
Women’s full and effective participation and decision-making in public life must include the voice(s) of women with disabilities – including immigrant women of colour with disabilities. The intersectionality between women, disability, and immigration status is a common yet untold experience. When we discuss inclusion, this demographic should be embraced in conversations around the workplace, politics, education, healthcare, faith and the entertainment industry. There are vital lessons to be learned from this intersectionality. Join RespectAbility in a lively discussion among panellists with this lived experience. We can do better nationwide and globally to learn from this perspective, helping to achieve gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls.
6. Feminist Alliances for a new civil society
When: 11:00 AM - 1:00 PM EDT on Tuesday, 23 March 2021
Sponsoring Organization: Associazione D.i.Re - Donne in Rete contro la violenza
Along with the Italian experience of a Position Paper “The Change We Want. Feminist proposals – 25 years on from Beijing ", edited by a group of 68 Italian feminist women representing 45 organizations in order to build together a strong political stance, to voice the change needed with reference to the 1995 Beijing Declaration in Italy, there will be a discussion among three of the Italian feminists co-editing that Paper and a Serbian feminist activist and the policy officer of Euromed Rights to build transnational feminist solidarities in a context of global backlashes against gender equality, and reflecting on the challenges of global feminism.
7. Build Back Safer, Inclusively: Women with Disabilities Addressing Violence
When: 12:00 PM - 1:30 PM EDT on Wednesday, 24 March 2021
Sponsoring Organization: Disability Rights Fund
Looking back on the year of Beijing +25 and COVID-19, feminists with disabilities in the Global South led some of the most innovative efforts to reverse increases in gender-based violence. Building on national-level advancements of CEDAW and involvement in Beijing+25 processes, these efforts were amplified through partnerships strengthened by the urgency of addressing the violence. Panellists will share insights from a year disrupted and recommendations based on experience to ensure a more equitable post-pandemic world.
8. Visible Voices: An Intersectional and Intercultural Discussion on Women Decision-makers
When: 1:30 PM - 3:30 PM EDT on Wednesday, 24 March 2021
Sponsoring Organization: Bell Global Justice Institute
Our Parallel Event will feature women of multiple intersectional identities who will share their lived experiences, challenges, and best practices on how they use their voices within decision-making spaces. Our speakers are dedicated community leaders and will address gender equity and empowerment at the intersection of indigenous rights, disability rights, gender-based violence, political rights, art and social justice, and youth leadership. Through our panel discussion, we aim to provide participants with effective ways of using their voices, and to amplify the powerful words of U.S. Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, “If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.”
9. The Irish Consortium on Gender-Based Violence Panel on Gender-Based Violence and Disability
When: 8:00-19:30 AM EDT Thursday 25th March 2021
*More information coming soon*
