While women from all walks of life celebrated International Women’s Day (IWD) yesterday, Elenoa Kaisau, from Vanuavou, Vaturova in Cakaudrove took to painting to express her feelings about the need to make women living with disabilities more visible.
She painted a picture depicting how women like her were often isolated, at all governance levels.
The community-based disability support worker got injured when she fell from a mango tree as a teenager. Since then she has to move around with the aid of a crutch cane.
A Soqosoqo Vakamarama iTaukei ni Cakaudrove board member, Ms Kaisau believes while IWD was an opportune time to celebrate and share women’s success stories, it was equally important to talk about the barriers they faced.
“We the women living with disabilities are still struggling to be included in the community,” Ms Kaisau said.
She was part of celebrations organised by the femLINKPacific office in Labasa which included painting and taking part in the media NGO’s suitcase radio program.
“The platform that femLinkPacific offers, gives us an opportunity to raise our voices on issues that affect us,” Ms Kaisau said.
She said most of the time women living with disabilities were invisible and “remained in isolation”. “Our participation in the community needs to be enhanced and for that to happen we need to have ownership of resources and the right to actively take part in economic activities,” she said.
“Our voices are still not effectively heard in the family, the community and in the world. ”
There needs to be more empowerment and capacity building activities so that we can break down barriers.”
femLINKPacific program officer Labasa, Sulueti Wati said the office’s IWD 2022 activities took a look at the importance of women in relation to gender equality, disaster risk reduction and climate change.
“Our main campaign theme was Break the Bias, which is important to us in trying to advocate for gender equality and breaking the bias in terms of women’s equal access to information,” Ms Wati said.
She said w, has helped rural women living with disabilities to talk about their experiences and challenges and informing the public about some of the ways in which they work together to address the barriers that impeded women’s progress.
