Gender, Disability, and Access to Health Care in Indonesia: Perspectives from Global Disability Studies

Disability is a global health crisis. About 15% of the world’s population or approximately one billion people are living with a disability-usually defined as a motor, sensory, speech, learning/developmental/intellectual impairment or chronic illness. Disability or mental illness can affect anyone, anytime. People in the developing world and women are more likely to experience disability; 80% of people with disabilities live in developing countries. Both the UN and the WHO have found that there is a higher representation of women among the world’s disabled population. In this chapter, we use a close reading of secondary literature and a collection of open-ended interviews of disabled Indonesian women to analyze the social, economic, and structural barriers women and girls with disabilities face when attempting to access healthcare in Indonesia. We use an interdisciplinary global disability studies approach that engages with the ways in which social class or caste, gender, ethnicity, language, and religion affect the lived experiences of girls and women in South and East Asia, and more specifically in Indonesia.