NDIS review has failed women with disabilities, advocates say

Leaders in the disability sector say the process surrounding the National Disability Insurance Service (NDIS) review, released last week, “bled dry” experts in the women’s sector, who have long advocated for the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) to develop a gender equality strategy. They’ve now been left feeling “betrayed” and “devastated” by a review they say fails women with disabilities.

Care services in industrialised nations like Australia have long been moving towards an “individualised funding model”, which aims to increase individual service users’ flexibility, choice and control over services and supports. However, research suggests such schemes have the potential to exacerbate inequalities.

In the case of women with disabilities, that’s precisely what’s happened. According to research published in the International Journal for Equality and Health, the NDIS has a female participation rate of only 37% — despite women and girls making up half of the disability population — and that rate has barely changed since the scheme’s inception.

Why is that? The research, led by Sophie Yates, a research fellow at the Australia National University Crawford School of Public Policy, found that disabled women face several barriers when applying for and receiving support through the NDIS, including their level of confidence; negotiation and self-advocacy skills in a system that relies on those skills; gendered discrimination in diagnosis and the medical system; and support for and recognition of their caring roles. 

“These results suggest that women are not receiving equitable treatment with regard to the NDIS,” the study states.  

As a result, advocates in the women’s sector, including Women with Disabilities Australia (WWDA), have advocated for the NDIA to develop a gender equality strategy.

WWDA CEO Carolyn Frohmader tells Crikey she was given personal assurances during the NDIS review’s extensive consultation process — to which the WWDA significantly contributed, including by hosting a “Sex and the NDIS” forum that, according to Frohmader, was so over-subscribed they had to turn people away — that the review would include a recommendation to develop the strategy.

So, imagine Frohmader’s surprise when the final NDIS review report did not include the recommendation for a gender equality strategy. Even worse, the review seems to have ignored women. The final 338-page report mentions the word “gender” just three times and “women” five times — and just two of those mentions of “women” were not about the specific needs of First Nations women or gender and sexual diverse people.

The NDIS review comes on the heels of the disability royal commission’s final report, which was likewise criticised for failing to acknowledge or address the specific needs of women with disabilities in its recommendations. It also comes ahead of an expected national gender equality strategy from the Albanese government due early next year. 

The Albanese government has promised that with the publication of a national strategy, it will embed gender and gender equality in everything it does — something called “gender mainstreaming” — and that this will be backed up with the equally anoraky-sounding but vitally important concept of “gender-responsive budgeting”. According to UN Women, that’s when the priorities and needs of all people, including women, are understood and included at every stage of budget design and planning processes, including analysing gender gaps and using the findings to shape and monitor budgets. 

“It’s a joke,” Frohmader tells Crikey. “They bled us dry, and yet it’s all siloed”, referencing the considerable contribution WWDA and others in the women’s sector made to the review’s consultation process in the hopes of elevating the needs of women with disabilities.

“My broader, systemic question is: what is the point of having a national strategy for gender equality, a national strategy to eliminate violence against women, and then this review comes out and there’s nothing.” 

“They promised me … and I think that this is so heartbreaking, this betrayal,” says Frohmader. 

“It’s, frankly, quite contradictory,” says Yates, lead author of the study looking at women’s experiences of the NDIS, though she emphasises that the review more broadly has a lot of positive things in it.

“They’re saying they will have a gender mainstreaming approach, but then it is absent from this review.” 

Jen Hargrave, an advocate for women with disabilities and researcher at the University of Melbourne who co-authored the study looking at women’s experiences of the NDIS, says, “It’s been devastating to see both the NDIS review and the royal commission ignore women in their recommendations.” 

“These processes are so extractive, they take so much from us,” she adds. “I don’t have much hope that either of those reports will help women with disabilities this year, next year, or the year after.” 

In response to the criticism, a representative for the NDIS review panel told Crikey, “We understand the barriers faced by women with disability and we call out ‘intersectionality’ specifically.”

“We strongly support a gender lens being put over all the review’s work,” they added. “We consider if our recommendations are implemented, gender equity considerations must be at the forefront to make sure implementation succeeds.”