In order to reap the benefits of a truly equal Wales, we have to achieve equality for all women, many of whom face intersectional inequality, not just on the basis of their gender but due to their experience as BAME women, LGBTQ+ women and disabled women.

In June, the Policy and Research Team launched their research into the experiences of Disabled Women in Work.

Throughout this research we aimed to understand and amplify the voices of disabled women, to understand how to make our workplaces inclusive and diverse. While this research was conducted before the Coronavirus pandemic, many of its findings and recommendations are even more pertinent as we need to ensure that we build back better.

The report reveals the extent of the discrimination that still exists towards disabled people, in terms of accessing employment, and treatment and support for disabled women within work. Of the disabled women we spoke to, 58% had faced prejudice or inappropriate attitudes from their employer and/or colleagues about their impairment or health condition. Focusing on recruitment practices specifically; nearly half (47%) said that job applications and interview processes are inaccessible.

One of our research participants shared her experience: “even when you go for a job interview and you say you’re in a wheelchair and [they say] ‘yes we’re accessible’. You can get to the door, but then you’re given like a table that you can’t get up to.”

However, making assumptions about the abilities and needs of disabled people can be dangerous and unhelpful - there is not a simple ‘one size fits all’ solution to making workplaces more inclusive of disabled people. Disabled people are not a homogenous group, and therefore requirements and adjustments will vary. Improvements need to be made collaboratively with disabled women and men, informed by their own experience and recommendations.

Employer flexibility, openness and understanding is therefore essential for disabled women to be able to progress in work. The most positive experiences disabled women told us about were those where workplaces and employers made suitable adjustments, communication with managers were effective, and colleagues and employers were open and willing to adapt to the needs of disabled employees.

The barriers faced by disabled women are not just limited to within workplaces themselves. Government schemes focusing on employability, or allowing workplaces to make adjustments need significant improvement to make their impact meaningful for disabled employees.

Disabled women also experience barriers within the social security system, where the lack of flexibility means that sometimes disabled women actually lose out financially in employment or are penalised for taking up short-term opportunities. As one participant put it; “There are difficulties sometimes with dealing with the system, whether it means social services, the DWP or anything like that… if you don’t fit in with the workplace, if you don’t fit into their neat little boxes, you may as well forget it.”

The report uses of the social model of disability in understanding disabled women’s experiences and how we can improve. Previous models of disability determine an individual’s impairment or health condition as ‘disabling’, viewing the impairment as the factor preventing them from doing tasks in the same way as a non-disabled person. Whereas the social model of disability is about the way our society is organised.

Within this model, disability refers to the barriers that people with impairments and/or long-term health conditions experience in their day-to-day life. These barriers are societal, and are caused by our attitudes, the way we design our environments and the way that we communicate. If we continue to design our systems and structures for a model that suits a select few and alienates so many, we will not realise equality for everyone in Wales.

We hope that the recommendations from this research will be taken forward by employers, the UK and Welsh Government, and that the experiences of disabled women documented in this report can be used to inform decision making and ensure that we can achieve equality of outcome for all women.