Seeing With New Eyes: My Journey as a Disabled Girl, Lady, Woman and Advocate

By Mercy Kavayi, Director, Resilience Hub – Disabled Women and Children of Kenya & Member of the EU YSB – Kenya

When I was born, I could see the world, the sky after rain, the faces of my family, the letters in my storybooks. But at age 8, everything began to blur. I was diagnosed with glaucoma, and my world slowly changed. By the time I was a teenager, I was partially blind/low vision. That’s when I first experienced what it means to be a disabled girl in a world that was never built for girls like me.

But losing my sight didn’t make me disabled. What disabled me were the barriers all around me, schools without braille and large print books, teachers who assumed blindness meant inability, and health services that never imagined a visually impaired girl would need information about her body or her future.

This is why, at Resilience Hub – Disabled Women and Children of Kenya, we proudly call ourselves disabled women and children. And we do so with confidence, grounded in the definition provided by the Commonwealth Disabled People’s Forum (CDPF), which explains:

Disabled people are those who experience barriers to participation due to the interaction between their impairments and socially created barriers, including attitudes, communication, and the built environment.

This is the human rights/social model of disability, which teaches us that disability is not a personal tragedy, it’s a failure of society to accommodate difference. This understanding shapes the work I do at Resilience Hub and it also influences how I advise the European Union in my current role as a Youth Sounding Board Member in Kenya.

Why We Say ‘Disabled Women and Children

People often ask why our organization chooses the term disabled women and children rather than “women and children with disabilities.” Here’s why:

Calling ourselves persons with disabilities focuses only on our bodies, as if the problem lies within us. But the real issue is how society treats us—the inaccessible schools, the discriminatory attitudes, the workplaces that assume we can’t contribute, and the policies that forget we exist.

By calling ourselves disabled women, we claim our right to name our oppression and stand together across all impairments—whether blind, deaf, psychosocial, physically impaired, or neurodivergent. It is a term of solidarity.

What Recent Data Tells Us

At Disabled Women and Children of Kenya, we believe that data tells powerful stories. We use data to transform lives, because evidence informs governments, development partners, and communities to face facts. As part of my advisory role with the EU, I also push for the inclusion of data-driven solutions in programs that target young people, especially young women and girls with disabilities.

Here’s the reality for disabled women and girls in Kenya today, drawn from recent data:

• According to the 2022 Kenya Demographic and Health Survey (KDHS), 1 in every 12 women in Kenya has a disability—most of them in rural areas, where services are hardest to access.
• The 2021 Kenya National Survey on Persons with Disabilities (by KNBS and the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection) found that only 32% of disabled women in Kenya are employed, compared to 55% of non-disabled women.
• A 2022 UN Women regional study on violence against women and girls with disabilities in East Africa found that 45% of disabled women in Kenya experienced physical or sexual violence in the past year—compared to 36% of non-disabled women.
• In education, a 2020 study by Humanity & Inclusion and Leonard Cheshire found that only 34% of girls with disabilities complete primary school, because of stigma, lack of accessible learning materials, and poor infrastructure.

These are not just numbers; they represent the real experiences of real girls and women. And this data must guide action, both at local level and at international level.

Linking Local Action to Global Policy

The theme for International Women’s Day 2025; For ALL Women and Girls: Rights. Equality. Empowerment—can only be real when disabled women and girls are part of every plan, every policy, and every program.

At Disabled Women and Children of Kenya, we work directly with disabled women and girls in communities—mentoring them, collecting data about their experiences, and engaging decision-makers at county and national level. But this work doesn’t end at home.

In my role as a Youth Sounding Board Member for the European Union in Kenya, I bring these same voices and facts to development partners and donors—advising them to design programs that fully include disabled women and girls from the very beginning, not as an afterthought.

From Losing Sight to Finding a New Vision

Losing my sight gave me a different kind of vision, a vision for a Kenya where no girl is invisible just because she is disabled.

As a member of Resilience Hub, I work to turn this vision into reality. As a Youth Sounding Board Member, I work to influence how the EU invests in young people in Kenya, reminding them that a program is never truly inclusive unless it works for all youth, including disabled youth.

This International Women’s Day, I have one message:

Disabled girls are girls. Disabled women are women. If you forget us, you are not fighting for all women—you are only fighting for some.

We are disabled women and children, and we say that with pride. Not because of what we cannot do, but because of what we are already doing and what we will continue to do until true inclusion becomes reality.