Course Details

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is the first international human rights treaty to recognize the potential for intersectional discrimination, in that case discrimination against women and girls with disabilities. Yet even though the Convention calls for targeted action to advance the rights of women and girls with disabilities and prohibits discrimination against them, research has shown that such discrimination remains endemic. Worldwide, women and girls with disabilities are less likely than their male peers with disabilities to attend school, to hold formal employment, and to be literate. They are more likely to live in poverty and to be subjected to gender-based violence, both as children and adults. Indeed, gender inequality remains more pervasive across societies than any other form of inequality and is more pervasive across groups within societies than any other form of inequality.

This course asks: What explains the persistent exclusion of women and girls with disabilities from civic, social, and economic spaces in their communities? How and when do law and policy reinforce that exclusion or offer pathways forward? The course is designed to critically engage legal theories, and theoretical approaches to gender, disability and global human rights practice in order to assess how human rights law and practices at the international and national level address the rights of women with disabilities. The course is intended to complement and build on existing coursework in LSJ and other departments on international human rights, disability studies, and gender and feminist studies, but will provide sufficient overview that no prerequisites are necessary. We will spend some time exploring core theoretical concepts before applying those concepts to contemporary problems. In particular, the course will encourage students to think critically about law and policy, particularly within human rights systems, and analyze how those systems may re-create or perpetuate inequalities and marginalization even while promising a more just future.

We will take a practice-oriented approach and engage in exercises that will familiarize students with advocacy tools like opinion writing as well as position statements and critical policy analyses. We will also engage with social movement actors and advocates and learn how they approach making human rights a reality for all.