pretoria: The Department of Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities (DWYPD) is leveraging the ongoing Disability Rights Awareness Month (DRAM 2024) to address the significant yet often-overlooked issue of gender-based violence (GBV) affecting women with disabilities.
According to South African Government News Agency, the Minister of Youth and Persons with Disabilities, Sindisiwe Chikunga, recently received the first South African National Gender-Based Violence Prevalence Study: A Baseline Survey on Victimisation and Perpetration conducted by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC). The study found that 7.7% of women aged 18 years and older have a disability. It highlighted that a greater proportion of ever-partnered women with disabilities experienced lifetime physical violence (29.3%) compared to those without disabilities (21.7%).
The study further revealed that 31.2% of women with disabilities have faced physical and/or sexual violence, emotional abuse (31.9%), economic abuse (16.3%), and controlli
ng behaviors (60.0%) by a partner in their lifetime. The prevalence of sexual violence from a partner was noted to be twice as high for ever-partnered women with disabilities (14.6%) compared to women without disabilities (7.2%).
Regarding recent forms of intimate partner violence (IPV), the report found no significant differences between ever-partnered women with and without disabilities for recent physical violence (4.3%), including 3.6% of sexual violence. Physical and/or sexual violence was reported at 6.9%, emotional abuse at 9.6%, and economic abuse at 4.4%.
The report underscored the urgent need for government, professionals, and service providers to play a vital role in identifying and supporting women affected by GBV, ensuring that women with disabilities are included in prevention plans. Minister Chikunga expressed concern over the heinous crimes committed against women with disabilities, noting that justice is often denied to them.
As the country observes Disability Rights Awareness Month, Chiku
nga emphasized that the final week of DRAM 2024 will focus on the security of persons with disabilities, addressing both natural and human-made disasters, including the pervasive threat of GBVF. She called for immediate action, stating that the findings of the study, which revealed that approximately 7,310,389 million women aged 18 years and older have experienced physical violence in their lifetime, should serve as a call to action.
The department is preparing for its five-year strategic planning session, where the study’s team will present their findings. These findings will be incorporated into the department’s strategic plan. Chikunga stressed the importance of community intelligence to get a granular picture from communities facing violence, urging a challenge to patriarchal values across all spheres of life.
The department aims to integrate the study’s findings into the National Strategic Plan on GBVF, recalibrating existing policies and programs in alignment with the evidence presented. The departmen
t will also benchmark strategies from other contexts, such as a 2023 study by Marco Colagrossi and colleagues, which demonstrated that news coverage of femicides increased help-seeking behavior.
Minister Chikunga concluded by stating that more research is needed in this area, and that mobilizing funding from public and private sectors is crucial to ensuring adequate resources for interventions against GBVF. Support for civil society will play a key role in this effort.