There is a persistent myth in South African policy circles that disability can be addressed in isolation. That if we get the ramp right, if we tick the employment equity box, if we include a disability clause in a policy document — we have done enough.
We have not.
For disabled women in South Africa — particularly Black disabled women, older disabled women, and disabled women in rural areas — the barriers we face do not arrive one at a time. They arrive together. Disability and gender and race and age compound each other in ways that no single-axis policy framework can adequately address.
This is what intersectionality means in practice. Not an academic theory. A lived reality.
What It Looks Like Here
A disabled woman reporting gender-based violence may find that the justice system is physically inaccessible to her. A blind woman seeking employment equity protection under the EEA may find that her application process was never designed to be navigated without sight. An older disabled woman accessing public healthcare may encounter ageism, ableism, and gender bias from a single consultation.
These are not separate problems requiring separate solutions. They are one problem with many faces.
The Numbers Behind the Barriers
Gender-based violence
According to the Human Sciences Research Council's First South African National Gender-Based Violence Prevalence Study, the prevalence of sexual violence by a lifetime partner is exactly twice as high for women with disabilities (14.6%) as for women without disabilities (7.2%). Physical abuse tells the same story: 29.3% of women with disabilities have experienced lifetime physical abuse, compared to 21.7% of women without disabilities. Financial abuse (16.3%) and emotional abuse (31.9%) are also disproportionately experienced by disabled women.
These are not international figures. These are South African figures, measured in South Africa, describing the lives of South African women.
Employment and economic exclusion
People with disabilities account for only approximately 1.3% of the South African workforce across all skill levels — a figure that signals severe systemic exclusion, not individual failing. Households headed by women with at least one member with a severe functional limitation experience the lowest average monthly income per capita of any demographic group in South Africa. In rural municipalities, only 11% of disabled youth are employed and earning a salary — making rural disabled women among the most economically marginalised people in the country.
Access to justice
The South African Police Service and the National Prosecuting Authority have historically lacked structural disability sensitisation, frequently omitting specific accommodations for disabled survivors in their multi-year strategic plans. Survivors with intellectual and developmental disabilities face rigid statutory barriers: courts typically only appoint an intermediary if a survivor's mental age is deemed below 18 and a magistrate specifically requests it. And disabled women frequently encounter prejudiced credibility assessments within the criminal justice system, where their testimonies are dismissed due to stigma or perceived communication barriers.
This is not a reporting problem. It is a systems problem.
What the International Community Has Now Acknowledged
When the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities closed its 35th Session in Geneva on 27 August 2026, it adopted new guidelines specifically addressing intersectional discrimination against girls, women, and older women with disabilities. For the first time, the international accountability framework governing disability rights has formally recognised that our experiences cannot be disaggregated.
That is significant. Because what gets named in international law eventually shapes what gets measured, funded, and enforced at national level.
What This Means for South Africa
South Africa ratified the UNCRPD in 2007. That is nearly two decades of binding obligation. The statistics above are not a description of a system that has not had time to respond — they are a description of a system that has not chosen to respond.
The CRPD session raised concerns across reviewed countries about gender-based violence against women with disabilities, barriers in public buildings, and gaps in inclusive education. South Africa faces all of these — and the HSRC data now makes the scale undeniable.
We cannot review disability policy without reviewing it through a gender lens. We cannot address GBV without addressing the specific compounded vulnerabilities of disabled women. We cannot talk about employment equity without acknowledging that disabled women are disproportionately excluded from the workforce — and that in rural South Africa, the exclusion is near-total.
Where Voice of Disability Stands
At Voice of Disability NPC, “Nothing About Us Without Us” is not a slogan. It is a methodology.
We will be tracking how South Africa responds to the CRPD's new intersectionality guidelines. We will be using the HSRC data in our advocacy. We will be asking which disabled women were in the room when disability policy was written. And we will keep saying it plainly:
Our lives are not single-issue. Our rights should not be either.
Fadila Lagadien is the founder of Voice of Disability NPC and BeAccessible, an AI-Enabled Accessibility & Disability Inclusion Specialist based in Cape Town, South Africa.