This report describes the lives of women living with disability in rural Sri Lanka and is based on field
work carried out in the North Central Province and Eastern Province of the country. The selection of
these two provinces was based on the field presence of AKASA, the Association of Women with
Disabilities, a small rural disabled women’s advocacy group. The methods of data gathering focused
upon group discussions and in-depth interviews.
The findings that emerged from the qualitative data relate to several spheres of life: the personal,
the family, the community, administrative regulations and the law. It was evident that ‘disability’
was not clearly identified as an abnormality. Rather, at the personal and the family level women
living with disability had been encouraged to live a ‘normal’ life, coping as much as possible with
their disability in environments that were not particularly accommodating of disability. This
approach to disability is almost completely reversed at the community level where women
experience marginalisation and other forms of restriction due to negative socio-cultural
constructions of disability. According to the findings that emerged from the analysis of the
interviews, the application of administrative regulations is irregular and, in certain cases, the scope
of the regulations themselves was not clear to the stakeholders. Awareness of the applicable laws
and the relevance of the human rights discourse to disability was low among the women who were
interviewed.
The findings from the interviews with women from the Eastern Province provided insight into the
impact of the internal armed conflict on women living with disability. The armed conflict both
caused disabilities and minimised the possibility of empowering women to live with disability. In the
post-armed conflict context, due to interventions by non-governmental organisations and the more
stable provision of services by the state, the quality of life of women living with disability has
improved comparably. It was also evident that women from the two different ethnic groups, Sinhala
and Tamil, were able to bridge the gap between them by working together in addressing the issues
they faced due to their disabilities.
A significant limitation of the findings of this report is the limited range of impairment type among
the research participants. The women with disabilities interviewed for this research predominantly
self-described as having a physical impairment. The life experiences of rural women living with
cognitive and/or intellectual impairments are under-represented within the findings.