(Th)reading Rights and Justice: Women and Girls with Disabilities

Abstract

Despite calls for no one to be left behind, women and girls with disabilities continue to face systemic marginalisation and gaps in rights protections that limit their access to education, health, public services, and justice. Research in transnational and international relations offers little to help understand this gendered disability injustice. This article examines how discussions of elements of justice as redistributive, recognition, participative and restorative address people with disabilities as well as how disability rights within the United Nations treaty body system address the four elements of justice. Drawing on both academic and community critiques of both disability rights and justice, the article asks how our understandings of justice and rights perpetuate these exclusions and what transformative changes are required to redress the marginalisation of women and girls with disabilities.