Employing people with disabilities is good for everyone

As 2020 draws to a close, and with the end of the COVID-19 pandemic not yet in sight, this is a useful time to reflect on lessons we may draw from our experiences of it. Millions of people globally have become much more socially isolated than they were before, afraid or unable to travel, fearful about their health and bodily integrity, and in some cases experiencing serious illness with ongoing consequences, and bereavement.

We have been forced to come face to face with our own isolation, and with our frailty.

On 3 December 2020, South Africa again joins the rest of the world in observing the International Day of Persons with Disabilities. This day falls two days after World AIDS Day, on 1 December. In 2020, more than in any other year, the proximity of the two dates feels auspicious, as it has been a pandemic (this time, COVID-19) which has made so many people more in touch with their isolation, their vulnerability, and their frailty, all issues that are well known to people with disabilities.

Universities fall short

South Africa is unusual in that we have disability mentioned specifically in our Constitution, and we have employment equity targets for employing people with disabilities, along with people of colour and women. Of all equity categories, however, it is in general true to say that as a country we are doing worst in terms of employing people with disabilities.

This is true across the board, including in the higher education sector, where I work. Many universities have policies in place to increase the numbers of employees with disabilities, but according to all data I have been able to find, all universities continue to fall short.

The push for equity in employment in higher education is an important one – a diverse academic workforce may well be associated with better quality research, with applications beyond the confines of the race, gender and able-bodied elites who have historically dominated university spaces.

Especially in the post-#FeesMustFall era there have been appropriately strident calls for taking seriously the imbalances in who get to be academics and to move through the system. These are all important issues. It is urgent that we create more open and diverse institutions, and, I believe, hence create stronger academic institutions. A key feature of the top universities in the world is that they are diverse, drawing on all talent available.

One of the challenges of the post-#FeesMustFall era in South Africa, though, is that there is great emphasis on histories of racial and gender exclusion. These histories are real and need to be addressed, but I worry that the systematic exclusion of people with disabilities from the academy is being allowed to continue as race and gender are viewed by many as more important. This is a loss, not just for potential employees with disabilities, but also for the higher education sector as a whole.

When an organisation like a university starts to appoint more people with bodily and other differences from the norm, these appointments can help the university address common issues in how the institution organises itself, unconsciously, to exclude.

Having disabled employees forces universities to think more about issues of transport, questions of flexibility of working hours and arrangements for workflow, questions of how time is managed and thought of as a commodity in a corporatised university system, to name just a few.

In short, if universities employ more people, and especially more academics, with disabilities, these staff members can help the university explore and change issues of corporate and institutional culture, as it is people with disabilities who are commonly most acutely affected by having to work in a world not designed for them.

Good for transformation

The more we learn from disabled academics about how universities are organised, the more is revealed about the hidden way in which these institutions may remain implicitly organised around the talents and needs of an old elite – the elite of white, able-bodied men. In short, employing more people with disabilities is good for transformation not just for those with disabilities, but for everyone. We can’t afford to ignore this issue as it is an important part of creating more open, diverse and stronger academic institutions.

There are those who will argue that given South Africa’s racial and gender history, now is not the time to worry about disability in universities. In response, I can point to a history in the struggle years in South Africa where gender was thought to be less important than race. We are all paying the price for this omission, as we as a country and as institutions struggle with gender inequality and gender-based violence.

And if we are being asked to wait to continue the fight for disability inclusion, my question is a simple one: When will it be time to continue this fight? When will disability be allowed to become a priority along with other priorities? In my view, the time is now, and not in some future which, given the widespread disavowal of disability as a profoundly political issue, I fear may never come.

Leslie Swartz is a distinguished professor of psychology in the department of psychology at Stellenbosch University, South Africa.