Disability and Inclusion in the Context of Feminism and Women’s Rights Movements – a learning paper by the AWESOME consortium.

Advancing Women’s Engagement: Strengthening Opportunities to Mobilise for Equality (AWESOME) focuses on strengthening women’s movements in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Uganda to be more representative of diverse groups of women, including women with disabilities. Together, these movements are a stronger collective voice in challenging inequality, and influencing policies and key decisions that affect them.

In August 2022, the AWESOME consortium partners held a learning event and interrogated questions around feminism and disability inclusion within the context of the AWESOME programme. The objective of the learning event was to closely examine both inclusion and exclusion of women with disabilities in feminist and women’s rights movements. Specifically, to understand patterns of exclusion, the forces driving this exclusion and how inclusion is understood by both mainstream women’s rights organisations and disability women’s rights organisations.

This learning event report contains reflections, experiences, and strategies on disability inclusion within the AWESOME consortium. The hope is that these learnings and conversations about disability, inclusion and feminism, grounded in concretely lived experience, will contribute to a more inclusive practice within the programme but also in the wider women’s movement.

Learn more about the AWESOME programme