Christina Ryan
Advocacy for Inclusion
Christina Ryan is the General Manager of Advocacy for Inclusion, which provides individual and systemic advocacy for people with disabilities. She has worked in the community sector in many capacities, including as Deputy Director of the ACT Council of Social Service, and has particular expertise around small business, management, governance, and organisational structure.
Christina undertakes human rights work nationally and internationally on women
and disability issues and monitors rights advances on an ongoing basis. She is
the Women with Disabilities Australia representative on CEDAW, including on the
National CEDAW Working Group which coordinated the recent Shadow CEDAW Report to
the United Nations.
She advocates systemically
on public housing issues, disability rights, and gender equity. Her particular
passion is the gendered nature of disability and the relationship between the
disability movement and the international women's rights movement.
Christina has assisted in writing political policy and was the first woman who uses a wheelchair to run for any Australian parliament when she ran for the ACT Assembly in 2001.
Commentaries by Christina Ryan:
Voting for the rights of women with disabilities
While the final Concluding Observations are yet to be
released by the CEDAW Committee at the UN there were many messages for a
potential government about what is needed for women with disabilities. The
central theme is the need for a strong human rights framework to underpin all
other mechanisms. While at the UN our NGO delegation received news that the
Coalition had committed to dismantling Labor’s newly promised human rights
framework. Clearly this is regressive policy and will disadvantage many people
in our community, including women with disabilities.
So, who to turn to if you are voting with the rights of
women with disabilities in mind?
The Greens: have several supportive policies, including a
strong commitment to human rights frameworks, but they have also clearly
expressed support for increased funding for institutional care for people with
disabilities. This is unacceptable policy and directly contradicts the UN
Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). Until this clause
is removed from Greens policy their broader disability policies cannot be
unequivocally supported.
The Coalition: have committed to dismantling the human
rights framework. This is extremely concerning and implies a general disregard
for international obligations. Strangely though, the Coalition is the only party
which has done any real work on banning non-therapeutic sterilisation of women
with disabilities having developed national legislation just before losing
office. Members of the Coalition also continue to support the work to achieve a
ban, despite the general lack of Coalition support for human rights frameworks.
Labor: has announced a new human rights framework and
ratified both the Optional Protocols to CEDAW and the CRPD. They have also
announced further measures for the disability community including a leadership
and mentoring scheme. Disappointingly the Labor Government has discontinued work
on banning non-therapeutic sterilisation and reported to the CEDAW Committee
that it would not ban it, but rather rely on state based guardianship tribunals
and courts. Encouragingly, Labor specifically identified women with disabilities
as a target group in its response to the Draft National Violence Plan released
this week; however, it has not clarified the role of gender analysis in the
current development of major disability policy. The Labor message is very mixed
message on the rights of women with disabilities and needs clarification.
Ultimately we seem to have a choice
between those who support human rights broadly, and those that would dismantle
human rights frameworks. No major party seems to understand the connection
between the key issues relevant to women with disabilities and
Women with disabilities are looking
for a government, and a Senate, which understands this crucial link and will
develop policies and legislation that acknowledge
Christina Ryan represented Women with Disabilities
A Woman Prime Minister Working for Women with
Disabilities?
Finally Australia has a woman Prime Minister! This is a
great time for all Australian women and gives us hope that the processes and
mechanisms of politics and policy may become less patriarchal.
So, what’s in it for women with disabilities as we head off
towards the CEDAW session at the United Nations, and to a Federal election later
in 2010? Well at this stage there isn’t much and there needs to be a lot. Women
with disabilities have been largely excluded from policy development, from
leadership roles, and from political processes.
The Labor Government has had almost 3 years to act on
several critical areas, which have been raised by women with disabilities for
many years. The UN CEDAW Committee of 2006 made 2 specific recommendations which
are yet to be acted on, and there are other serious issues to be addressed where
we have fought hard to even be at the table.
In 2006 the CEDAW Committee recommended that the Australian
Government ensure the collection of data across all government programs which is
disaggregated by gender and disability. This has not happened. We are still not
able to gain an accurate picture of the effectiveness of programs and policies
in advancing the status of women with disabilities. It is particularly important
to understand how mainstream government services and funding programs are used
by women with disabilities. The Howard government abandoned such data
collection, and the Rudd/Gillard government has not restored it in any useful
way.
The CEDAW Committee also recommended that the Australian
Government “develop the necessary infrastructure to ensure that disabled women
have access to all health services”. There has been some small progress to date,
with new draft general practice standards which include provision for height
adjustable examination tables, but this is fragile and the government hasn’t
incorporated accessibility or gender analysis into its health reform agenda.
Another critical issue is the continuing practice of
non-therapeutic sterilisation of girls and women with disabilities, which was
highlighted earlier this year when the government refused to act after a court
case in Queensland. Uniform national legislation banning the practice of
non-therapeutic sterilisation has stalled under the Labor government, after
reaching draft form under the Howard government.
Women with Disabilities Australia (WWDA) fought hard to
finally get a seat on the National Violence Prevention Council after initially
being overlooked. This was despite the very high level of violence against women
with disabilities and the lack of accessible refuge services.
So, women with disabilities hope that having a woman Prime
Minister might at least allow some of these difficult issues to be discussed and
acted on. It is always a challenge to get men to understand why sterilisation
and violence are so critical, but perhaps a woman will get it.
WWDA will be asking the United Nations CEDAW Committee to
recommend that Australia address these areas so that the rights of women with
disabilities can start improving. Perhaps our time is finally coming, but don’t
hold your breath.
This year marks an opportune convergence for Australian
women.
Women with disabilities have been part of the CEDAW
non-government organisation (NGO) process for some years. Women with
disabilities will form part of the NGO delegation to CEDAW next month and are
also a part of the work being done on developing an NGO report against the
Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).
Naturally many of the issues against both treaties are
the same, but for women with disabilities there is an added dimension: many of
the issues raised in the recent NGO report to the CEDAW Committee are the same
as those raised in the previous NGO report 4 years earlier. This is of great
concern as it begins to look like nothing is progressing. The federal election
is an opportunity for the major parties to commit to progressing these issues
and ensuring the status of women with disabilities is raised in line with
Some progress has been made by the Rudd government on key
areas like improving universal housing design, access to affordable housing, and
ensuring that women with disabilities are part of work being done to address
domestic violence. There has also been substantial work done on ensuring that
women with disabilities benefit from
Despite these
gains there are some key areas which must be addressed by the major parties if
they are to gain the confidence of women with disabilities:
·
All programs of government
must have good data collection, disaggregated by gender and disability, to
ensure programs are effective for all potential beneficiaries.
·
Leadership, development and
mentoring programs must be developed specifically targeting women with
disabilities.
·
Formal reviews of the
gender based impact of the Fair Work Act must be undertaken with particular
attention to the casual and part time work undertaken by women with
disabilities.
·
Accessible and inclusive
health care, including bulk billing, must form part of any health system reform
process.
·
Programs which support
parents with disabilities must be developed nationally to reduce the level of
women with disabilities in the Care and Protection system.
·
Non-therapeutic
sterilisation must be banned through national legislation.
·
The over representation of
women with disabilities in the criminal justice system must be addressed.
4 June 2010
Getting people with
disabilities elected
Australia’s parliaments have traditionally been white and
male. In the last few decades women have increased our representation, but other
groups in the community still lag far behind. For people with disabilities
equitable representation remains a long way off.
Major headway has only recently been achieved with the
election of Kelly Vincent on 20 March 2010 to the South Australian Legislative
Council.
The significance of Ms Vincent’s election is that she is
clearly a woman with disability. Women with disabilities are seriously behind
the eight ball when it comes to leadership and representation in Australia.
Somehow our community still doubts the capacity of people with disabilities to
act as decision makers, particularly to make decisions about others. For women
with disabilities the situation is even starker as we are seen as asexual and
pathetic creatures who are unable to determine what is best for ourselves, much
less make decisions affecting others.
In this Federal election year how many candidates with
disabilities will be running for Federal parliament? It will be particularly
interesting to see how many candidates with disabilities will be representing
the major parties? Even more concerning: how many will be women?
There have been several single interest disability parties
over the last decade, including Ms Vincent’s own Dignity for Disability, but the
participation rate of people with disabilities in major parties remains almost
non-existent. Federal opposition leader Tony Abbott made a point of
congratulating Ms Vincent when he met her at a recent function, but how many
people with disabilities is the Liberal Party putting forward in safe seats for
the Federal election, or any seats for that matter?
To be fair, the Greens and the Labor Party also have a dearth of candidates with disabilities and this doesn’t look like changing anytime soon. In the extremely tough environment of major party preselection people with disabilities struggle to be seen as credible resilient candidates. This is despite many having enormous strength and capacity due to living every day with what most of the community would be unlucky to come across once within a whole lifetime.
Many of us will be keeping an eye on Kelly Vincent. She must
be tough as she has survived as a woman with disability and got this far. She
can’t be expected to achieve too much politically as she is sitting on the cross
benches, but she will be raising substantial awareness about disability
everywhere she goes.
Most significantly it will be very hard to discount the
impact of government policy on people with disabilities when there is one
sitting in the same room participating. That will be one of Ms Vincent’s real
contributions. Now all we need is someone in the Federal parliament to start
participating too.
Christina Ryan
recently ran for Federal preselection for the Labor Party in the seat of Fraser.
Supporting independence – not pushing into
work
Disability funding is at crisis point. Bill Shorten,
Parliamentary Secretary for Disability, recently said “The
current system is not working - and is not cheap” (Opening
of the National Disability Summit, Melbourne 29 April 2010). We urgently need to
find another way of looking at this complex policy area to support people to the
level they need, and to remove the current gender disparity.
Most people with disabilities can’t get the support
they need and many barely subsist on what they can get. Yet governments (Labor
and Liberal) continually endeavour to reduce the numbers of people on the
Disability Support Pension (DSP) using various measures to push people into the
workforce.
Some measures are harsher than others; some are well
intentioned but have harsh consequences. Very few measures seem to actually
work. More new measures were announced in this week’s Federal Budget, but there
is uncertainty about how effective they will be in achieving an equitable
outcome.
About half of all women
with disabilities rely on the DSP so these measures will impact on women, and
they will impact differently to men because of the nature of disabilities in
women. Many women have chronic and episodic conditions that are less
predictable.
In February the
Australian Federation of Disability Organisations said “there are complex
reasons for people with disability remaining unemployed. Employers are simply
not hiring people with disability; even within the Australian Public Service the
rate of employment of people with disability sits at 3 per cent of the total
workforce, falling from 3.8 per cent in 2005.”
Inclusive and accessible workplaces are a crucial
part of the equation. More importantly, though, people with disabilities cannot
sustain employment without appropriate reliable supports. It is impossible to
turn up for work or school if you cannot rely on personal care support to get
you there. Support is not only needed at the workplace, but outside it. Yet most
employment schemes only fund supports that will be used while at work.
For many people with
disabilities moving into the workforce means losing their pension card, which
provides means tested access to vital services. Reducing the work test to 15
hours has exacerbated this jump into the unknown for many people, who simply
cannot afford to lose their pension card entitlements – including transport,
medication, and support service concessions.
These services are not discretionary, they are
basic, and few find them reliably. The “lucky” few are usually people with high
needs and most of these are men. Others can’t afford them, or only find them
sporadically, so they are seen as unreliable and therefore unable to work. Many
of these are women.
Rather than force people into the wider world and hope that it works, government must turn around its thinking and support people with disabilities to be independent. Independent people will make their own decisions including the decision to work or study. Supporting independence requires recognition of the different experiences of disability, and the gendered differences in disability. There can be no generic solution.
Gendered analysis needed to ensure disability support is equitable
On 14 April 2010 the Federal Government announced the
Productivity Commission consultation for a new national disability insurance
scheme. The structure of this scheme has evolved and it is now called a
“national disability care and support scheme”.
Support for people with disabilities
has been woeful for many years. People with high level needs rarely have their
needs fully met, and people with moderate needs often miss out entirely.
(Australian Institute of Health and Welfare 2009 Disability in Australia:
multiple disabilities and need for assistance. Disability series. Cat. no. DIS
55. Canberra: AIHW.)
Under the Howard Government people with disabilities were
directly targeted through the Welfare to Work reforms and many found themselves
under pressure to find jobs. Such attempts to reduce the number of people
relying on the disability support pension will always fail until people with
disabilities are provided with appropriate support. The Rudd Government has
taken a more positive approach towards people with disabilities, but the system
remains focussed on reacting to critical need, rather than on strong forward
planning in collaboration with the States. The current system is an ambulance at
the bottom of the cliff.
Women with disabilities are substantially disadvantaged by
this current system. Unfortunately all indications are that this disadvantage
will continue under the new national disability insurance scheme, as it is
increasingly being branded for those with “severe or profound” disability rather
than for everyone. This is where the use of gendered analysis is critical to
developing an equitable scheme which can meet all needs and provide a mechanism
to develop independence.
Severe or profound disability is much more likely to occur
in men (for example: AIHW: Norton L 2010. Spinal cord injury, Australia 2007–08.
Injury research and statistics series no. 52. Cat. no. INJCAT 128. Canberra:
AIHW.), so targeting people with severe or profound disabilities means that
programs will be developed which will support men more than women. The current
reactive system across Australia, funded through the National Disability
Agreement, supports men more than women because most State and Territory
governments focus on the desperate unmet need at the severe and profound end of
the spectrum. In some States men are favoured over women at a rate of 2:1, yet
the incidence of disability is equal.
There is no suggestion that current recipients of support
should not be getting what they are getting, but to structure a brave new system
on a similar model risks entrenching current gender inequities well into the
future. This means women with disabilities will continue to miss out on the
medium level supports needed to provide independence and dignity, and therefore
employment and education opportunities.
Recognition of the different disability experiences of men
and women, by undertaking a gendered analysis development process, will work
towards alleviating current discrepancies and the risk of perpetuating them in
any new scheme. Accepting that all program development should incorporate
gendered analysis will ensure that women with disabilities move closer to equal
participation in the community to men with disabilities.
18 April 2010
The importance of government mechanisms to support women
As part of Australia’s obligations under the Convention on
the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), and the
related Beijing Platform for Action (BPFA), governments are required to have
mechanisms in place to advance the status of women.
Under the Howard government the Office for Women was
downgraded to a line department. This directly compromised its capacity to
influence cabinet submissions across all areas of government policy development.
The Rudd government has not restored the Office for Women to the Prime
Minister’s Department, which perpetuates the barrier to equitable program
development.
For women with disabilities, who are significantly more
disadvantaged than either men with disabilities or their able bodied sisters,
these mechanisms are crucial.
Women with disabilities are less likely to be in paid work
than other women, men with disabilities or the population as a whole. Women with
disabilities are less likely than their male counterparts to receive a senior
secondary and/or tertiary education.
Women with disabilities are substantially over-represented
in public housing, comprising over 40% of all persons in Australia aged 15-64 in
this form of tenure. Women with disabilities are less likely to own their own
houses than their male counterparts.
Women with disabilities pay the highest level of their gross
income on housing, yet are in the lowest income earning bracket. Some women with
disabilities pay almost 50 per cent of their gross income on housing and housing
related costs.
Women with disabilities spend more of their income on
medical care and health related expenses than men with disabilities.
Women with disabilities have a consistently higher level of
unmet need than their male counterparts across all disability levels and types.
Sixty per cent of recipients of disability support services, funded under the
National Disability Agreement, are men with disabilities.
While many of these figures are much older than they should
be, they paint a clear picture of disadvantage. Yet it is impossible to address
the systemic discrimination which has caused this without meaningful statistical
input or gendered program analysis across all areas of government.
In addition to relegating the Office for Women, the Howard
government made significant cut backs at the Australian Bureau of Statistics
(ABS). While some ground has been made up in recent years, there is still a
significant incapacity by the ABS to collect data across a broad range of
population areas that is disaggregated by both gender and disability. This
failing has been recognised by the United Nations when it asked Australia in
2006 to “include adequate statistical data and analysis, disaggregated by sex,
ethnicity and disability, in its next report so as to provide a full picture of
the implementation of all the provisions of the Convention.”
(http://daccess-ddsny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N06/237/98/PDF/N0623798.pdf?OpenElement)
With current major program rollouts and program developments
across many areas of social policy, including disability, housing, and welfare,
the capacity of government to undertake gendered analysis of all programs and
policies must be restored. There is no current indication by either major party
that this will happen.