Alarmingly High Number of Illiterate Women with Disabilities

The Information Center for Persons with Disabilities „Lotos“ organized the fourth workshop for women with disabilities titled „Different Approaches and Documents on Disability Issues“.

The workshop was led by Assistant Professor Zumreta Galijašević, PhD, who presented approaches and ways of representing disability and the experience of persons with disabilities to the participants through work on examples from everyday life situations. Through exercises and discussion, the participants learned how much significance and impact different ways of viewing disability, such as the charitable, medical, functional, and social models, have on the life of a person with disabilities.

Devastating statistical data from the World Health Organization and the World Bank were also presented, according to which, for example, the literacy rate of women with disabilities is 1%, while 80% of women with disabilities are dependent on family assistance in daily activities, the institutionalization of women with disabilities compared to men with disabilities is twice as frequent, etc.

The workshop was realized within the project for women with disabilities called „It's Time for Our Rights“, implemented by I.C. „Lotos“ and partially funded by the U.S. government.

From I.C. „Lotos“, it was announced that they hope the project will contribute to making Bosnian society more inclusive, and to ensuring certain types of necessary support through which women with disabilities, as the most marginalized group, will be able to exercise their rights equally with other citizens within their communities. Also, the goal of the project, as further stated in the announcement, is to provide women with disabilities with the opportunity to acquire the knowledge and skills necessary for independent living and to gain more self-confidence.