Originally published here.

This report3 presents the UK case study as part of the Study on Discrimination and Access to Employment for Female Workers with Disabilities. The main focus of the analysis is England, although we have highlighted UK-wide issues and policies, where relevant. The statistical data and analysis presented refer to the UK, unless otherwise specified.

The report is structured as follows: Chapter 2 outlines the national debate on the concept and definition of ‘multiple discrimination’ (or ‘intersectional discrimination’) in relation to access to employment for disabled women, while the following Chapter presents the socioeconomic conditions of disabled women in the UK using a wide range of indicators regarding both the gender and disability employment gap. Chapter 4 outlines the national legal and policy framework on disability and employment from a gender perspective, where possible, while Chapter 5 presents some examples of good practice in terms of addressing the disability and/or gender employment gap. Chapter 6 discusses the main challenges in relation to the barriers, including dual discrimination that disabled women face when seeking to access employment or while in work which emerged from both out literature review and stakeholder interviews. Finally, Chapter 7 summarises the main conclusions and puts forward some policy recommendations on how to remove the multiple barriers that disabled women face and improve their access to employment.

In addition, Annex I includes the full list references used for this report; Annex II presents the list and details of the stakeholder interviewed as part of this study; Annex III includes additional data and information, including statistical Tables relevant to this study; and Annex IV includes the good practice fiche.

Despite the UK’s long-standing equality (and anti-discrimination) legislation, disabled women are still less likely to access employment, receive equal pay and advance their careers due to many social and institutional barriers. Even when they are highly qualified, disabled women have lower participation rates in higher skilled occupations and work fewer hours than both non-disabled women and disabled men.

The already weak and precarious labour market situation of disabled women is further deteriorated by the significant gender pay gap they experience: compared to non-disabled men and women, the pay gap for disabled men is 11% and for disabled women is 22%. Disabled women have poor employment outcomes when compared to disabled men and although, in recent years, there is a lower employment gap between disabled men and women, the pay gap between the two has increased. Moreover, the employment disadvantage of women with mental health impairments is greater than that of disabled women generally.

The Government has tried both through legislation, notably the Equality Act 2010 and policies to address discrimination on the basis on gender and disability. However, it seems that, to date, this has been based on treating such characteristics separately as opposed to adopting an intersectional approach with regard to gender and disability. Such a single-axis approach combined with the fact that the issue of dual or multiple discrimination does not seem to be clearly and explicitly articulated by the Act further deteriorates the labour market disadvantage of disabled women.

Likewise, although there are a number of employment-related national programmes and initiatives aimed at people with disabilities such as Access to Work, there is no national programme or initiative aimed specifically at disabled women. Yet, apart from the major policy push of improving access to employment for the disabled, key government priorities is to increase the labour market participation of women together with achieving gender and pay equality.

There has been an increased focus on the activation of the disabled not least because of both the growing size of population deemed disabled and the disability employment gap as well as the associated costs of disability-induced economic inactivity. The underlying philosophy is that employment – with appropriate support for the disabled – is the best route to independence, health and well-being for most people of working age. However, the fundamental welfare reform of recent years which has been combined with stricter conditionality and lower benefits have also hit the disabled disproportionally hard, and women harder.

Even when disabled people do access employment, they face considerable challenges. There is still, among many employers, a considerable lack of understanding of the principles of disability discrimination law as incorporated in the Equality Act, and even unwillingness to make reasonable adjustments for disabled employees (as required by the Act). Even worse, employer discrimination and conscious or unconscious bias still remains a considerable barrier to labour market entry.

Yet, a large number disabled men and women wish to enter and stay in employment and could do so, if the necessary adjustments were in their workplace. However, at present there seems to be too little flexibility to put such adjustments in place, meaning that disabled people can then have to rely unnecessarily on full-time sick leave which, in turn, puts then at a disadvantage compared to their peers with no disabilities. For disabled women, in particular, the UK’s perennial lack of widely available and affordable childcare is a major barrier and further compounds the problem of their labour market entry and progression. Moreover, they are by far more likely to experience bullying and harassment at work and beyond.

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