Invisible Chains

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INVISIBLE CHAINS
                                  

BACKGROUND CONTEXT: 

What year did you say it is? 2024 - Did I hear it right? After all these decades - exclusion, marginalization, underrepresentation, and discrimination - are still persistent. With these flaws in sight, how can one say that the wheel of progress is not punctured?


Despite relentless fights and demands for representation, the disabled community still faces extensive disparities and barriers when it comes to political participation as well as representation.


UN reports that women with disabilities are significantly underrepresented in national coordination mechanisms on disability matters. In 2017, data from 17 countries in the Asia-Pacific region revealed that organizations of persons with disabilities included nearly twice as many men as women, with men representing 21 percent and women only 12 percent of all mechanisms. 

In other types of organizations, the disparity was similar, with men constituting 43 percent of all mechanism members compared to 24 percent for women. Women with disabilities also face underrepresentation in gender equality institutions. In 7 of the 17 countries surveyed, national machineries for gender equality had no women with disabilities among their members. In the remaining five countries, only 9 percent of members were women with disabilities.


This poem is an ode to all the women who fought continuously with an undying hope for equality, which was brutally slashed by supposed moral entities.


We hereby declare this with utmost sadness,

The soul that once aspired of flying above the sky, lays pale 

The wings that once armored the faith 

Have bled for years, and now withered dry.


In corridors of power, their shadows were shattered

In mechanisms of progress, their absence is a glaring void,
Guess, society's lens is cursed with clouds of prejudice,

Failed to see their undying light, sigh, what a miss!


For every barrier erected, they pledged to tear down,

For every voice silenced, they moved 3 steps back.

A picturesque dystopia where all can freely soar,

Invisible Chains wrapped around them as they roar.


As if their voices were removed from the scrolls of History

With the rites of immortal hope, 

here lies the grave of deferred dreams.


~ Niyati Bali

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