• autor/i: Lj. Kovacevic, D. Vujadinovic, M. Evola

Intersectional Discrimination of Women and Girls with Disabilities

University of Belgrade Faculty of Law, 2022

The implementation of LAWGEM project has led to the publication of books of great importance not only for teaching staff, but also for legal practitioners, students, as well as anyone else interested in acquiring a better understanding of contemporary gender competent legal questions.

This also relates to the book Ukrštena diskriminacija žena i devojčica sa invaliditetom i instrumenti za njihovo osnaživanje / Intersectional Discrimination of Women and Girls with Disabilities and Means of their Empowerment (Ljubinka Kovačević, Dragica Vujadinović, Marco Evola /eds/, University of Belgrade Faculty of Law, Belgrade, 2022, XLI + 955 pages). 

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The publication of the edited volume Ukrštena diskriminacija žena i devojčica sa invaliditetom i instrumenti za njihovo osnaživanje / Intersectional Discrimination of Women and Girls with Disabilities and Means of their Empowerment should contribute to responding to many relevant questions, such as concerning the concept of disability, contraposing medical and social inclusion oriented conceptions of disability, critical reconsidering of gender-based discrimination of persons with disabilities, as well as articulating legal, political, social, cultural, social policy instruments for improving the status of persons with disabilities and for combating gender based discrimination of them.

This book offers theoretical and practical insights into issues of importance for the legal position of persons with disabilities in general, and women and girls with disabilities in particular. The papers included in the book will help explain how disability and sex/gender intersect in the context of social, political and economic processes, as well as expound on legal instruments that contribute to the creation of conditions for effective enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms for all. The hope remains that with the publication of this edited volume, a firm step forward will be made in the efforts of the University of Belgrade Faculty of Law to improve the visibility of intersectional discrimination, and to contribute to its solution by systematizing the existing knowledge in this field, as well as through methodological innovations and consideration of a multitude of topics from all of the basic legal disciplines and some other scientific disciplines. We are also hoping that the contributions published in the edited volume will inspire other scholars to consider disability as an analytical category and to include it in their research on a regular basis.

The 38 articles are grouped into ten chapters, with a different number of articles within each chapter. In a sense, this reflects the incidence and prevalence of discrimination against women and girls with disabilities in certain segments of social relations. At the same time, all the articles together form a whole, since they are connected thematically, and are aiming towards the same goal – a critical assessment of the content and limitations of the relevant regulations and public policies and measures undertaken to establish essential equality in society.