Guide on How to Integrate Disability into Gender Assessments

There is a strong need for USAID Missions to take proactive measures to ensure that women and men with disabilities are included in gender assessments and analyses. It is estimated approximately 10-20% of the world’s population have a disability. Even with such a large representation within communities, people with disabilities often face blatant discrimination. This discrimination, combined with possible inadvertent barriers, often leads to people with disabilities being excluded from USAID programs and activities. This document serves as a “how to” guide on including women and men with disabilities into USAID’s gender assessments and analyses. Specifically, this document also provides the following information:

• a brief overview of why it is important to include disability in both activity analysis and country-level gender assessments;

• issues specific to disability that one may need to consider while conducting an assessment;

• suggested questions to include during an assessment following a frequently used gender assessment framework; and,

• additional resources for information on disability.