Nexus of violence and employment discrimination against women with disabilities in India – a scoping review

Abstract

The concept of violence has been considered a potential barrier to the inclusion of women with disabilities (WWD) and has raised interest in human resource management literature. However, existing studies have discussed the individual concepts of discrimination, inclusion, and violence against women with disabilities and studies with an apparent link examining the relationship between violence and employment discrimination (ED) have not been established by empirical research, and a confirmatory study is called for. The literature on the concepts of, violence and ED against WWD linkages is rarely established. As evidentially, few interventional studies have been conducted, leading us to follow a scoping review with the PCC model of PRISMA guidelines to carry out this study. This review article focuses on the causal relationship between violence and ED against WWD to provide an understanding of the existing literature, thereby identifying new research avenues for future research. Specifically, this scoping review identifies the nexus between antecedent violence against WWD and ED experiences, and provides insights that provide a comprehensive map connecting their linkages.

Keywords:

• women with disabilities (WWD)
• employment discrimination (ED)
• violence
• Feminist disability theory (FDT)

1. Introduction

Existing studies in the US indicate that women with disabilities (WWD) who had higher rates of violence reported lower rates of employment, as victims of violence are associated with a diminished rate of workplace performance, with an overall inability to obtain or retain appropriate employment (Smith et al., 2017). This prompted researchers in India to conduct a review of the literature that reports this notion in the Indian context. This interest has been partly supported by accumulating National Crime Bureau documentary evidence that Crime against WWD has no place in its annual reports till date (Ministry of Home Affairs, Govt. of India). Accordingly, this review analyzes the relationships between violence and employment discrimination (hereafter termed as ED) aspects, to provide insight into the research question of whether violence against WWD leads her to experience ED ending up with unemployment.

In a recent scoping review, Meyer et al. (2020, 2022) examined the forms of measurement of violence against WWD and explored the intersections of violence, to highlight barriers and facilitators in the approaches to measure violence. Moreover, no review study has been conducted to establish the causal dimension of violence leading to ED relationships. Therefore, further review in the Indian context is necessary to provide a better understanding of the concepts that integrate the evidential discussions in the literature that acknowledge the socio-cultural effect of a developing country specific to India. Researchers aim to meet the objectives of Sustainable Development Goals (5, 8, 11,16) and the UN Convention on Rights of Persons with Disabilities (Articles 5, 6, 13, 16, 27, 31). Thus, this study has significant societal, organizational, and individual implications.

This scoping review intends to identify the relationship between concepts such as violence and ED against WWD populations in the Indian context using the PCC model of the PRISMA-ScR guidelines. As the number of empirical interventional quantitative studies on the link between violence and ED has not proliferated over the years, our understanding of this connection could not be improved by the PICO model of PRISMA guidelines; thus, the Population, Concept, and Context (PCC) model of PRISMA guidelines (Tricco et al., 2018) is utilized to discuss in detail the nexus between violence and ED against WWD in the urban and rural contexts of India (UN member country). The resulting theoretical review serves as a reference framework that provides a much clearer view of the association between violence and ED against WWD in India.

In our analysis of the nexus between violence and ED against WWD, researchers have described the concept of ED against WWD considered in the literature within the Indian context, as the socio-cultural factors moderate the perception of employers furthering to make WWD experience ED (Tefera et al., 2018). This review article focuses on the causal relationship between violence and ED against WWD to provide an understanding of the existing literature, thereby identifying new research avenues for future research. Specifically, this scoping review identifies the nexus between antecedent violence against WWD and ED experience. Thus, these insights provide a comprehensive map of their linkages.

2. Theoretical background

According to Garland-Thomson, two areas of activism (women and disability movements) promote equality and non-discrimination in the socio-economic spheres of society against disability. The purpose of exploring the interconnections between ED and violence under Feminist disability theory (FDT) is to examine changes in the social environment that promote equality and security for indigeneity. Academic activism is a beneficial place to start for advocacy because of its significance in the learning, documenting, and structuring of acceptance, awareness, and visibility (Garland-Thomson, 2002). The fundamental understanding of the epistemological foundations of FDT remains a significant gap towards discussing measures of discrimination in employment against WWD (Daruwalla et al., 2013, Garland, 2002; Mays, 2006; Riley et al., 2022; Wendell, 1989). This paves the way to consolidating the explorations of assumptions and concepts that underlie the interconnected execution of theories into practices.

3. Women with disabilities in India

India is one of the diverse member countries of the UN, has 29 states, 7 union territories, and 22 officially recognized languages; it has adherents of all major religious faiths in the world, with significant geographical differences in both rural and urban areas experiencing various stages of development. Nearly half of all employment in the nation is distributed among the top five states: Gujarat, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Uttar-Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu. An unequal distribution of GDP contribution among all states in India has been observed (Pant & Venkateswaran, 2020).

The World Report 2011 by the WHO and World Bank on Disability estimates that 15% of the world’s population has some or other disabilities. The criterion for disabilities shows that the prevalence rate of disabilities among men is 12, while that among women is 19.2%. According to the Census 2011, there were 11,824,355 WWD compared to 14,986,202 men with disabilities, making up 44.09% of the total number of disabled people in India (Mehrotra & Nayar, 2020; Varshney, 2022).

The gender gap between disabled employees is remarkable, with 47% of men and 23% of women employed (Saikia et al., 2016). Yet, it is productively engaging in the informal economy and households, which does not appear to be recorded in the latest Census 2011 (Addlakha, 2022). According to a recent survey, disabilities are linked to unfavorable employment outcomes, including less job stability, unprofessional or inadequate training programs, lower compensation, and a lack of inclusion and participation in work activities (Varshney, 2022), WWD require more protection from exploitation and abuse than other women (Dutt, 2016; S. Sharma, 2022).

In India, although the history of the women’s movement had a focus on issues of dowry, sati, female feticide, domestic violence, and other issues, it rarely had disability in its agenda (Mulholland et al., 1998). Being women and being disabled poses her to intersectional discrimination in India, as the notion of discrimination against women is a known fact, over which the notion of discrimination against the disability they experience (Cheng et al., 2018). Although gender norms in India expect women to be in social roles, ableist norms stigmatize WWD, excluding them from social roles, resulting in lower rates of marriage, and higher rates of divorce (Gudlavalleti et al., 2014). One of the authors links the intersectional feminist theory to her own life experiences and explicates how violence and discrimination are rolled in the sexist and ableist workplaces (Tewari, 2021). In most developing countries, WWD become victims of society due to their popularity as they are marked by fate, meant for charity, and cursed by God (Dawn, 2014). WWD in Asia usually hesitate to disclose their disability as she gets sexually objectified along with racially fetishized experiences (Tewari, 2021).

4. Employment discrimination

In an attempt to consolidate all evidentiary discussions to investigate employment discrimination experienced by WWD, a broad conceptualization was done by Froschl et al. (2000), as discrimination is an enduring issue for all disabled, where WWD are subject to intersectional forms of discrimination based on two biases, viz., sexism and ableism (Cheng et al., 2018). In the patriarchal society of India, a combination of gender disparity, orthodox traditions, myths, socio-economic status, and disability type forms a constraint on the health, socio-economic, and political opportunities available to a WWD, and tends to belong to the most vulnerable population. With this intersectional discrimination, the WWD suffers extreme violence in domestic and institutional settings (Tewari, 2021).

Employment discrimination refers to discrimination on the basis of gender, along with ableist thought of vision with belief behind the thought that WWD has difficulties that may come across in the proficiency-performing activities that are formally recognized, which concerns the accomplishment of duties and tasks that are specified in a job description (Kim et al., 2020; Østerud, 2021). In contrast, if the organization is not equipped with accessibility and accommodation, it is obvious that such a candidate cannot be expected to perform tasks equivalent to the case where it has complete accessibility (Busby, 2018; Fuentes et al., 2023; Jaffrès & Guével, 2017). Instead, most of the time, rejection occurs due to the perceived notion of incapacity on the part of WWD rather than to fulfill a working environment free from harassment and barriers to accessibility (Corcuff et al., 2021). This study analyzes how violence in society leads to perceived notions of the employability of WWD having not much appreciated.

5. Violence against WWD

In this scoping review, the definition of violence against WWD researchers examines the concept at two levels: the rural and urban contexts of violence. Violence against WWD is defined to be “a problem which incorporates an almost endless list of injustices and maltreatment involving denial of employment and social participation, lack of financial control, denial of freedom of autonomy, unnecessary institutionalization and as well as physical and emotional abuse” (Murthy, 2004). Violence could be the withholding of money, abandonment, threats, or actual physical violence (Mulholland et al., 1998). Silence is also considered a conscious form of emotional violence (Camilleri-Zahra, 2016).

WWD are identified by their vulnerability to the inability to protect themselves from physical violence due to architectural inaccessibility, institutional settings, lack of required equipment, stereotypes, and dependence on others for certain daily activities (Dawn, 2023). One study proposed that workplaces are saturated sites for intersectional subordination of power relations (Oppong et al., 2022) of ableism and sexism, exposing WWD to a higher likelihood of experiencing sexual harassment in the working environment (Tewari, 2021b). Even though national and international laws exist in favor of WWD, along with the non-existence of a legal framework to implement it (S. Ghosh et al., 2022).

The author advocates intersectionality to be the best aid to analyze issues of violence and discrimination against WWD, as WWD with health issues are more exposed to violence (Eyasu Alemu et al., 2023; Meyer et al., 2022) and violence tends WWD to experience more discrimination (Bader et al., 2018; Ghosh et al., 2022). This observation supports the belief that the boundary between abled and disabled shifts constantly, indicating that one who is abled can become disabled at any time of the given situation of violence (Tewari, 2021). It has been documented that whoever experienced violence, WWD showed high levels of depression, distress, and even attempted suicide (Riley et al., 2022).

6. Methods

With an initial understanding of the PCC model, we consider scoping review to be more suitable to reach our aim of providing a consolidated assessment of the literature on concepts of violence and ED against WWD and its related grey literature to relate the findings of the academic literature with the authentic reports available on the official websites of the Government of India. Researchers aim to map the findings by cross-verifying the literature with the grey literature involved in the discussions relating to studies in the rural and urban contexts of India.

7. Search and selection

Researchers systematically searched all available journal articles in electronic databases, including PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, Wiley Online, Taylor and Francis, Emerald Insight, ProQuest, and Google Scholar. We conducted structured searches of Indian gray literature on National Crime Bureau Reports from 2019 to 2023. Table 1 reports the comprehensive search strategy employed in the study while Table 2 shows the inclusion and exclusion criteria followed for extracting relevant studies.

Table 1. Search strategy with article title, abstract, and key-words (OR is used between each keyword)

	Search strategy
1	(“women with disabilit*”, “physical disabilit*”, “physically disabled”, “Person with disabilit*”, “people with disabilit*”, “women with functional impairment”, “disabled women”, “women and girls with disabilit*”, “youth with disabilit*”, “females with disabilit*”, “women employee with disabilit*”, “women candidate with disabilit*”)
2	(“violence”, “domestic violence”, “intimate partner violence”, “abuse”, “physical abuse”, “physiological abuse”, “psychological abuse”, “mental abuse”, “assault”, “crime”, “economic abuse”, “verbal abuse”, “emotional abuse”, “sexual harassment”, “sexual abuse”)
3	(“discrimination”, “employment discrimination”, “workplace discrimination”, “rejection”, “job rejection”)
	1 AND 2 AND 3 AND 4
	Limit to country – India, Language – English, Publication status – Journal publication and Books.

Table 2. Inclusion and exclusion criteria following PCC model utilized for filtering the articles

Category	Inclusion	Exclusion
Population	Participants being women with disabilities above the age of 18 years with physical disabilities. Including the cross references of relevant articles meeting the above criteria.	Girls with disabilities or minor or any other category of gender or any WWD having mental health issues or having any intense health issues of benchmark disabilities such as cancer etc.
Concepts	Any form of violence and employment discrimination.	Medical and mental health related discussions.
Context	Research conducted in Indian context including urban, semi-urban or rural India. Including study on many countries where India be one of them.	Studies not having the scope of country India.

8. Study selection

Researchers have utilized Mendeley as a bibliographic software management platform. Researchers removed duplicates using Mendeley before transferring them to the datasheet for review. For the study, two authors [ASL and SK] independently checked the titles and abstracts to decide which articles should be included for review of the full text. To avoid discrepancies, such articles were included in the full text review. All articles shortlisted for review of full text under inclusion and exclusion criteria were reviewed by [ASL and SK]. Another author [NKM] reviewed the gray literature by conducting a double screening process for inclusion.

Researchers have utilized Mendeley as a bibliographic software management platform. Researchers removed duplicates using Mendeley before transferring them to the datasheet for review. For the study, two authors [ASL and SK] independently checked the titles and abstracts to decide which articles should be included for review of the full text. To avoid discrepancies, such articles were included in the full text review. All articles shortlisted for review of full text under inclusion and exclusion criteria were reviewed by [ASL and SK]. Another author [NKM] reviewed the gray literature by conducting a double screening process for inclusion. Thus, Table 3 documents the total number of articles extracted from various well-known databases; the duplicated documents were removed, and the final count of documents resulted in 21 relevant articles.

Table 3. Lists the number of articles included in the final review

	Databases	Search results	Articles filtered on title	No. of Articles after removing duplicates and irrelevant to core concept.
1	Scopus	10	7	21
2	Web of Science	04	3
3	PubMed	09	2
4	ProQuest	78	17
5	Taylor and Francis	17	9
6	Wiley Online	13	3
7	Google Scholar	56	4
8	Emerald Insights	10	3
9	Cross references	10	10
	Total	207	58	21

9. Results of literature search

10. Results

Researchers have conducted a scoping review (Adjorlolo et al., 2021), and in the following sections, have provided a discussion of the in-depth inquiries and conceptual discussions of the literature chosen for the study. First, researchers examine the quartile of journals in which the article is published, and the methodology adopted to identify the causal relationship between violence and discrimination in employment. Researchers then review the concepts in the classification of the rural and urban contexts of India. Finally, researchers explored the effect of violence resulting from employment discrimination against WWD.

11. Analysis

Table 4 depicts the data analysis process initiated with the categorization and classification of relevant literature based on papers discussing violence and employment discrimination published over the last two decades (2002–2022), a period in which studies on this topic were concentrated. After selecting the relevant articles, analysis was initiated with a detailed reading of each article and their classification based on quartile (Q1 = 8, Q2 = 4, Q3 = 2, Q4 = 1, No quartile ranking = 1, and Books = 5), methodology adopted for inquiry and discussions as out of 21 articles, four articles were quantitative papers, four articles were qualitative articles, four articles were reviews, and eight articles were conceptual papers. Our first-level reading of articles helped us to extract discussions on the basic concepts of ‘violence and ED against WWD.” Our detailed reading of the title, abstract, and article allowed us to ascertain the nexus between violence and ED. The next step was to separate studies that accurately discussed the nexus of violence leading to ED. Thus, we accumulated 21 studies depicting discussions closer to the conceptual aspects of study.

Table 4. Indicates the quartile of the journals in which the articles are published, methods adopted and the context of discussions

Citation	Journal Quartile	Method	Context of discussions
1. Ghai (2002)	Q1	Review	Rural context
2. Mehrotra (2004)	Book	Conceptual	Rural context
3. Daruwalla et al. (2013)	Q2	Qualitative	Rural context
4. Dawn (2014)	Q1	Review	—
5. (Shahid et al., 2016)	Q2	Conceptual	—
6. Dutt (2016)	Q1	Conceptual	Rural context
7. Ghosh Nandini, N. Ghosh and Ghosh (2016)	Book	Conceptual	Rural context
8. Yon and Nadimpalli (2017)	Q2	Conceptual	Rural context
9. Dean et al. (2017)	Q1	Qualitative	—
10. Ramadass et al. (2018)	Non-Scopus	Quantitative	Rural context
11. Mehrotra and Nayar (2020)	Book	Conceptual	Rural & Urban context
12. Tewari (2021)	Q4	Conceptual	Urban context
13. Riley et al. (2022)	Q1	Quantitative	Urban context
14. Keenan et al. (2021)	Book	Conceptual	—
15. S. Sharma (2022)	Q1	Qualitative	Rural & Urban context
16. Varshney (2022)	Q3	Qualitative	—
17. S. Ghosh et al. (2022)	Q1	Quantitative	Urban context
18. A. Sharma and Panicker (2022)	Q3	Quantitative	Urban context
19. Meyer et al. (2020, 2022)	Q1	Scoping Review	—
20. Addlakha (2022)	Book	Conceptual	Rural & Urban context
21. Eyasu Alemu et al. (2023)	Q2	Systematic review	—

12. Theoretical discussion

In this discussion section, researchers consolidated the theoretical understanding of the concept of violence and ED investigated in the study, and thus were able to provide information on the contextual relationship between concepts of violence and ED within the existing theories and thereby provide new avenues for the establishment of an advanced theory on feminist disability.

In India, the initial critical disability feminist scholars identified in the first decades of the study area were K.V. Nimbkar in 1980, Renu Addlakha in 1998, Davar in 1999, Dhanda in 2000, Ghai (2002), and Hans in 2003 (Meyer et al., 2020, 2022). They kept the arguments ongoing by challenging both feminist and disability movements (Daruwalla et al., 2013) by reporting the lived experiences of WWD, which redefined the accepted ideas of ability and femininity in the Indian context (Sapra, 2016, p. 145).

According to Sarah, the academic contribution of the ecological model by Curry et al. is notable, which assists better understanding of violence against WWD, as the model identifies cultural and environmental factors impacting type, severity, and prevalence of violence against WWD that includes the intersections of ableist and patriarchal perspectives resulting in exclusion and discrimination against WWD from economic opportunities (Meyer et al., 2020, 2022). Disability, as explained in the stigma theory, identifies how the antipathy related to impairment of body affects WWD to feel discriminated in the workplace due to the ideology of inferiority (Tewari, 2021). While the intersectional feminist theory proposes the nature of an accessible workplace so that it could be appropriate for any woman to fit into, where her mobility is not constrained, questions on her being are not posed, and her privacy is not violated (Tewari, 2021). The two-dimensional discriminatory experiences in the recruitment of WWD occur within the “Ableist” and “Sexist” perspectives of employers (Tewari, 2021b). There is a possibility of intersection with the necessary scholarly activism of race and nationality (Daruwalla et al., 2013; Keenan et al., 2021). An investigation of the impact of concept disability on gendered identity is required by reflecting the socio-cultural position (Keenan et al., 2021), as any investigation and discussions remain incomplete without considering the intersections of the socio-cultural status of WWD (Sapra, 2016).

Literature on Indian feminist theory lacks the required quantum of discourses about disability (Ghai, 2002), as WWD is often ignored within feminist theories to the extent that accommodation, appraisal, and judgement of a particular disability are highly dependent upon its context (Daruwalla et al., 2013; Keenan et al., 2021). Even the literature is found to be mainly on workplace experiences (Tricahyadinata et al., 2020) of male employees with disabilities than female employees, due to which the feminist perspective of disability and employability connection is less in itself on discriminatory practices (Varshney, 2022). Wendell (1996) argued that disability theories that discuss lived experiences of discrimination in their cultural context can contribute to the development of feminist disability theory (Varshney, 2022).

13. Discussion in Rural Indian context

It should be noted that a large number of disabled people live in rural areas, which could be the reason for the absence of accurate data on the magnitude of the issues in India (Dutt, 2016; Saikia et al., 2016). Prior studies have indicated a dearth of information regarding employed WWD, particularly in small enterprises in India (Varshney, 2022).

In rural India, disability is viewed as a stereotyped notion of being short-tempered, which is evident even in folk songs and local sayings (Mehrotra, 2004). They constantly get verbally avenged and are not seen as complete or as a person. Insults with negative connotations are hurled at them and addressed by words such as “bawali” (for mentally challenged), “langdi” (for one with limb deformity). Their inability is often exaggerated, and they are made to sense inferiority (Mehrotra, 2004; Mehrotra & Nayar, 2020). Rural Indian society does not perceive persons with disabilities as persons with special needs, as no special care is provided to women in specific to their disabilities or for redesigning the house or exempting them from work; instead, they are put into all possible household responsibilities (Mehrotra, 2004). She usually experiences a feeling of “not accepted,” in her family environment, initially due to their gender and then due to disability, where derogatory remarks from family and peers reflected an assumption that being disabled meant being incapable and unemployable (Daruwalla et al., 2013). Self-defeating thoughts and negative self-concepts are very common, specifically with women who have experienced potential psychological and physical violence, Where WWD themselves do not see their disability as a causal factor for experiencing violence; rather, it is an additional dimension (Daruwalla et al., 2013).

The framework of Indian society is composed of deeply ingrained structures of hierarchy and inequality, where a particular group of people is privileged due to their caste, gender, or culture (Cooke & Saini, 2010a, 2010b), whereas a lower social status is given to women. This cultural system is the main cause of workplace discrimination in India (Kundu & Mor, 2017). Due to conventional gender norms and expectations, WWD in India endures double discrimination (Garland-Thomson, 2002). Disability is primarily perceived as a consequence of “karma” which meant to have committed an offence against God and so cursed with bad fate. Some parents prevented their daughters from learning mobility skills or travelling by train, as they believed that disability may lead them to encounter accidents (Daruwalla et al., 2013). The destiny of WWD is still envisioned in the context of marriage (Jojo et al., 2019) as it is connected to social security (Mehrotra, 2004). The authors found that WWD is more likely to be abandoned or divorced than other women due to the thought that household chores require physical fitness and mobility, and her working outside the home is still not considered a better option and the literacy rate of WWD is very low, as the state support in rural areas is not as high as in urban society with regard to education and economic stability (Mehrotra, 2004). With such conditions in rural India, the addition of structural violence pushed WWD into vulnerability and exclusion (Mehrotra, 2004). The anticipation of potential violence and the unexplainable effect of emotional and economic violence would explain why participants in rural India are expected to emphasize them in their narrative form (Daruwalla et al., 2013). Employment is the most difficult task for disabled people in India and is more experienced by those from non-urban places, as they face the worst employment situations in urban cities with multiple disadvantages due to poor economic background, less education, being disabled, and the cultural influence of being bought up in rural places (Kulkarni & Lengnick-Hall, 2011).

It was found that WWD are not as employed as others, indicating their dependency on their families, which enhances their vulnerability and exposure to violence. The study indicates a significant relationship between education, employment, and violence, and neither government nor non-government organizations have any statistical reports on violence against WWD (Mehrotra & Nayar, 2020).

14. Discussion in Urban Indian context

Devyani Tewari explains the urban context of how the gendering rule of restrictions is implemented in one mode of address, where violence is another mode of addressing. Being a woman is a way of learning, where she is warned that she will experience sexual violence. If she does not change her conduct to suit the sexist and ableist society and the harasser’s wishes, she herself could be held accountable for the harm done to her. This is the tragic reality of gender fatalism (Tewari, 2021). Inequities exist between different groups of employees at work; however, inequalities are worse when the population is more vulnerable. Compared to others, lower social status is experienced as a result of a female gender with a disability (Tewari, 2021).

Violence was found in the form of inequalities in work opportunities in the private or governmental sectors, and WWD continued to experience rejection from being employed with social support. Discriminatory behavior of employers toward WWD was with reasons that WWD would not be able to “keep up” good relationship with coworkers, less productive, and not capable of completing the tasks in time (Daruwalla et al., 2013). The lack of support and autonomy was likely to reinforce their negative self-perceptions they already had. Violence is rarely an isolated incident; instead, it is typically a pattern of ongoing incidents of structural violence (Daruwalla et al., 2013).

Perceptions about WWD with physical challenges such as being defenseless have made them easy targets by known people and strangers, which often continue to occur in public spaces, buses, and trains, as they are more susceptible to exploitation because of their dependence on others for assistance (Daruwalla et al., 2013). It is crucial to note that workplaces in an ableist patriarchal society can serve as a saturated site that causes discrimination against WWD because it combines various patriarchal representations, ableist patterns, and practices of social interactions (Tewari, 2021). A second layer of discrimination on top of the pervasive gender bias was disability because people frequently assumed that they were incapable of carrying out daily tasks, fulfilling gender roles, or engaging in educational or professional activities, and were sometimes considered a burden or as persons deserving sympathy or pity (Daruwalla et al., 2013).

According to research on violence and intersectionality, there is a bidirectional association between violence and mental health issues, as women who have experienced violence frequently experience serious mental health problems. This is especially important because the line separating disabled and non-disabled individuals is blurred and ever-shifting (Tewari, 2021). Although some studies are found in the domain of disability, they are still rarely from the perspective of WWD, one of the reasons is that they are rarely visible in public spaces. Consequently, WWD are turned away from the ableist-gendered workplace and forced towards home, which limits their ability to create knowledge by publicly sharing their true experiences publicly (Tewari, 2021).

15. Nexus of violence with employment discrimination against WWD

Studies conducted in developed countries indicate that WWDs who have experienced higher rates of violence report lower rates of employment (Smith et al., 2017). The pervasive intersection of sexist and ableist practices with negative attitudes that stereotypes with stigma and prejudice often lead the decision-maker to exclude the WWD by discriminating and limiting their right to equality of opportunities that flourish their ambitions (Yon & Nadimpalli, 2017). Victims of violence are associated with diminished workplace performance and an overall inability to obtain or retain appropriate employment (Smith et al., 2017). Often, violence stigmatizes a victim’s reputation in the workplace, and perpetrators can still threaten or behave inappropriately. WWD’s participation in employment is well documented, with a high rate of inequitable pay and barriers in accessibility leading to a high unemployment rate (Smith et al., 2017). Exclusion from employment may be due to various reasons, such as barriers to accessibility, lack of adaptability, unequal allocation of money and time in their household for their requirements, and lack of affordability of needed accessories (Dean et al., 2017).

In a study, it is argued that exemplified instances of discrimination against WWD in institutions shall be, such as not providing accommodation or harassment, and a greater likelihood of being subject to sexual harassment. The harasser is never reproachable, and even the WWD is pilloried by harassers and their colleagues. It would be difficult for a WWD to fight for her personal space in institutions, as there are tacit ways of telling a WWD that she does not belong to the workplace (Tewari, 2021). Ableist gendered workplaces impair their ability to contribute their knowledge, as social status is intricately connected with social relations at workplaces. Often, in such an environment, WWD loses their space due to strange encounters with questions at her very existence in the workplace.

The extant literature shreds evidence for the connection between discrimination and unemployment, as the WWD who experience discrimination at various levels end up underemployed or unemployed. As a result, some WWD choose not to disclose their disability in their profile applications (Varshney, 2022). Further, WWD face multiple forms of discrimination in terms of social exclusion and lack of autonomy, due to which they are exposed more towards vulnerability to violence and discrimination, resulting in unemployment and later again in violence (Dean et al., 2017).

Thus, although this scoping review has found an association between employment discrimination and violence, it still has not been able to collect a study conducted in India exactly establishing the research question as to whether violence has a causal effect enhancing the likelihood of experiencing employment discrimination among WWD, resulting in an increased unemployment rate of WWD in India. The employer would be bothered by the risks associated with managing violence against WWD in workplaces and perceive WWD as not a good choice of candidate for task completion. The only study conducted in the US provided evidence for discussions towards the related findings, which states that WWD who have experienced violence in comparison with any women with or without disabilities who have not experienced any form of violence are more likely to be unemployed, where a medium effect was found for both physical and sexual violence, depicting that both sets of variables impacted the employment rate of WWD (Smith et al., 2017).

The only study conducted in India that partially supports the research question was by author Payel Rai Chowdhury Dutt (2016), where she says that WWD, by and large, is not considered capable of providing for themselves, and so she is cast aside as incapable of meeting her basic needs of employment, education, health, or housing. She is considered a misnomer who does not fit into the societal status quo. It is quite difficult for her to communicate an act of violence, as in India, such incidents are not much protested, this reality of violence becomes an incessant, and so is not documented under the regulatory bodies.

16. Research gaps identified for future research avenues

16.1. Theoretical gap

Researchers in developed countries argue that material feminist interpretations and disability theory, with their emphasis on gender relations, disablism, and poverty, should be used as alternative tools for exploring the nature and consequences of violence against WWD (Mays, 2006; Wendell, 1989). Discussions by feminist disability theorists have led to a concern for creating a platform for analyzing ED issues experienced by WWD. Platforms that incorporate disability theory and material feminism are needed to offer insights into the causes and consequences of violence against WWD are needed (Garland, 2002).

17. Population gap

WWD may be less researched for a variety of reasons, including those related to methodology that could be planned and carried out, in processing research ethics, the issues of lack of definitional clarity, inadequate data collection, and ill-targeted policy interventions leading to incidence and prevalence of discrimination and violence against them at an unacceptably high level worldwide (Meyer et al., 2020, 2022). The exploration with the WWD experiencing workplace discrimination and avenues to investigate reasons associated are very limited, necessitating exploration of possible avenues to investigate reasons for inadequate employment (Daruwalla et al., 2013).

18. Contextual gap

In India, it is a relatively recent phenomenon for the public to be aware of the challenges and concerns that impact the lives of disabled individuals. The reality of WWD in India, which is characterized by a complex combination of caste, gender, and socioeconomic concerns, is frequently overlooked by Western disability academics (Ghai, 2002).

19. Conceptual gap

Particular emphasis was placed on emotional violence, as well as perceived structural violence caused by social standards, which made WWD vulnerable and excluded. Violence against people with disabilities in social construction has not been extensively investigated (Daruwalla et al., 2013). One study reported interviews with WWDs, which revealed that new layers of discrimination were continually emerging. For some, it manifested itself through treatment, daily contact, lack of accommodation, the type of work assigned to them, and lower pay than that of physically able workers. The psychological complexities among WWD, leading them to be underemployed or unemployed in the long run, are still a topic of research that needs further exploration (S. Ghosh et al., 2022). Thus, researchers with collaborative topics on violence and disability have an obligation to assume responsibility for conducting studies to understand the nexus among ED with the issue of violence against WWD in the Indian context to the extent of public awareness.

20. Policy implications

A number of violent sexual assault cases have recently come to light in various regions of India, where perpetrators preyed on victims’ helplessness, fragility, and disability. However, there are no comprehensive statistics on violence against women with disabilities. Despite this high frequency, there have been no attempts to map the degree of matter. The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) and other sources lack accurate data as a result (Dawn, 2014).

India enacted the RPWD Act to fulfill the ratification process of the UNCRPD; however, the RPWD Act of 2016 has not adopted a specific gendered approach as required by the UNCRPD, and not a single provision to address the problems of WWD (Mehrotra & Nayar, 2020). Although the RPWD Act 2016 was enacted in 2017, it is still not properly implemented in many aspects, such as the registration of equal opportunity policies from private organizations. Thus, Disability legislation ignores the gender realities of WWD in her struggle towards a safe life.

Although the RPWD Act provides reservations for disabled people in government establishments and incentives for private organization employers to hire disabled people, diversity inclusion still has unique challenges. The authors suggest that investigating diversity management issues in the context of each country or sector of industry would enable WWD to perform its full potential and help form holistic HR strategies to manage heterogeneous personnel (Pant & Venkateswaran, 2020).

21. Conclusion

This scoping review offers an understanding of the current status of the prevalence of violence against WWD in rural and urban places in India throughout the pertinent bodies of literature. Violence resulting in an ED against WWD is not well known. Our findings point to significant gaps in the literature, such as the absence of a comparison of how various types of violence against different categories of disabilities among women make them experience ED in India, and have accumulated future implications along with future lines of investigation and analysis.

We attempted this scoping review to understand the quantum of research on the prevalence of violence that affected the employability of WWD in India based on feminist disability theory. Although the literature offers insights into the complex intersections and pathways between disability, employment, and violence, there is still a dearth of comparable data on disability employment and violence. One of the limitations is that researchers could find quantitative studies on aspects of employees with disabilities in the workplace environment or return to work, and rarely found studies specific to WWD with quantitative analysis on different aspects of discrimination moderated by different forms of violence with perceived discrimination on disability concerns. Researchers have not identified a clear and comprehensive study on different forms and measurements of disabilities specific to their impairments and experiences of violence and discrimination within the search strategies included in this scoping review.

22. Limitation

This scoping review found little evidence on the nexus between the WWD population in the Indian context, as the data were found to individually discuss concepts such as education, employment, discrimination, vulnerability, or violence, whereas researchers were unable to find any literature that would find the ideology on addressing the key questions such as how prevalence of violence in society affects the helpless image of WWD, why employers do not perceive WWD as a viable candidate for employment, or how the rate of violence against WWD in society moderates the relation of employers’ intention to employment of competent WWD to the employers’ behavior of recruiting competent WWD considering them as employable or rejecting on the fear of consequences of violence against WWD candidates and risks associated with it.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

All relevant data in this scoping review are within the manuscript.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Satish Kumar

Satish Kumar, Associate Professor, Department of Commerce, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal 576104, [email protected] ORCID ID 0000-0002-7007-2064