Women with disablities and labour market integration in Spain

Abstract

In April 2019, the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities assessed Spain’s compliance with the 2006 Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Its observations reveal the direction disability policy has been taking in recent years to make visible the unique position of women with disabilities and the obstacles they face, especially in the field of employment. Even today, despite the efforts made by public authorities and the legislator in order to provide appropriate solutions, official statistics and various studies highlight the fact that women with disabilities have lower levels of education, lower activity and employment rates, and high unemployment. The concept of disability and its treatment at a political and legal level has evolved in Spain in parallel to what has happened at an international and European level, from an individual medical care model towards a social model of human rights in which disability is the result of the interaction between people with a functional deficit and the barriers of the environment. The progressive application of the mainstreaming principle, which is helping to apply the gender approach in disability policy and vice versa, is a step forward that may result in a more favourable treatment of women with disabilities in the Spanish labour market. This paper shows some recent legal measures adopted by Spain in response to the Observations of the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities wondering about their real effectiveness in a labour market as peculiar as the Spanish one.