Do visually impaired women suffer from discrimination in employment ?
by Vivi-Anne EMANUELSSON
In 1999 a governmental report called "Women, men and disability" was presented by Bengt Lindqvist, who for a period of ten years worked as UN Special Rapporteur on disability issues. The survey focused on discrimination because of disability and/or gender.
We are all well aware of the fact that men and women have different initial positions in many respects. On an average women have inferior positions compared to men both politically, economically and socially. The pattern is the same in many areas. In working life the differences are obvious when it comes to, among other things, participation in leading professions, career opportunities and level of income. Maybe it is more important for us who haven’t got a wealthy husband.
We don’t know if women with disabilities suffer from discrimination both because of their gender and their disability. But we know from the survey made in 1999 that there are differences in living conditions between women and men with disabilities.
Among disabled people, 46 percent of the men consider their health good, but only 32 percent of the women.
More men than women get individually tested technical aids.
More women get an early retirement pension instead of being offered labour market measures.
Twice as many women than men work part time.
Regarding rehabilitation, perhaps we receive what we request, because men and women ask for different things when it comes to rehabilitation. Men want to know what rights they have and are very pressing in their demands for exact and correct information. They want to learn the system of rehabilitation completely.
Women think it is of greater importance to have someone to talk to about their situation, someone who is able to understand and support.
Men get rehabilitation at an earlier stage in the process and also to a greater extent than women. More often than women, men get education or are given the opportunity to keep their employment while working with different jobs.
This is a description of the situation in Sweden, but I am afraid you can find the same situation in most countries. The question is: is this discrimination or a choice of your own?
The Swedish Association of the Visually Impaired has made several surveys that confirms the results of Bengt Lindqvist´s report.
Several surveys indicate that the gender problem and the disability constitute a double handicap for visually impaired women. Women do not get access to the rehabilitation resources to the same extent as men. Women use more medicines, but are prescribed cheaper medicines than men. More women use technical aids but have to pay for them themselves more often than men.
Visually impaired women do not get allowance and full early retirement pension to the same extent as men. The list can be made very long.
During the spring of 2000 we interviewed members of the SRF regarding among other things their employment situation. The number of people interviewed in working age was 198. Out of these 105 were women and 93 men. The average age was 48,5 for the whole group, for the women 50 and for the men 47.
From this study we found no dramatic difference between the sexes regarding the employment situation. The biggest difference, which has already been well documented, is that many more women work part time.
The age factor has proved to have a relatively big impact on the employment situation. Our results show that it is for the women that age plays the biggest role. For women above 50 the degree of employment decreases considerably. Out of the women up to the age of 50, 65% have jobs, but that percentage decreases for those above 50 to only 39%. For the men there is no corresponding change. In our selection in this investigation the number of men having jobs was just as high also for those above the age of 50. Whether the decrease for women is due to the exclusion factors or whether it is a result of the fact that fewer older women were working earlier cannot be stated here. Future investigations will tell the reason.
There were big differences regarding the employment situation for those interviewed living in big cities compared to the rest of the group. Men in big cities have early retirement to a much larger extent and are gainfully employed to a smaller extent compared to those who live at other places. The result is surprising and should be further examined to find out if it is correct. An analysis of the selection shows that the differences are not due to higher average age or higher number of people with additional functional impairment/s among men in big cities.
In the material there were no significant differences in the number having gainful employment between persons with sight-rests and persons without sight-rests. Different investigations regarding this issue have given different results, sometimes differences have been found and sometimes not. The conclusion that can be drawn is that there are factors with greater impact than just the degree of the visual impairment within the group of visually impaired as