Women with disabilities work unwaged

• In an inaccessible world, all people with disabilities have to work hard just to survive, but women with disabilities work even harder.

• Many of us look after children, friends, families and others in our communities (who may have disabilities themselves), on top of coping with our own disability or ill-health.  As women, we have less resources than men, and have to deal with worse discrimination.

• Dismissed as a “drain on society”, we want recognition for our work and contribution – we are carers and workers too, for ourselves and other people, even when we don’t have a waged job.  And mostly, the jobs we can get have very low wages and bad conditions, making us even poorer than we were on benefits.

• So much of the disability work we have to do, is not necessary – it shouldn’t take so much effort just to move around, communicate, or get things done.

• Billions are spent to kill and disable people in wars – on landmines across Africa, cancer-causing depleted uranium-tipped bombs and other weapons in Afghanistan and Iraq, Agent Orange and other poisons in Vietnam and Colombia, nuclear bomb testing in the Pacific, bulldozing and shootings in Palestine...  Little is spent to meet people’s needs, including those of us with disabilities, even war veterans, or to clean up pollution -- those funds are limited, rationed and regularly cut. Since billions went to the banks, no one believes that there is not enough money to meet community needs.