About the Symposium:

Disability is an important yet understudied field in global social policy. It is especially understudied in Asian countries where disability tends to be dealt with among the family instead of by social policy. This symposium will bring disability more prominently into the social policy discourse and facilitate the generation of new empirical evidence in this field.

In the symposium, interdisciplinary conversations among people with diverse experiences and backgrounds will provide opportunities to discover solutions to old and new problems related to disability. Participants come from diverse disciplinary backgrounds including the social sciences, the humanities, and interdisciplinary fields such as disability studies. The symposium will focus on social policies and their impacts on persons with disabilities, their families, and communities.

The symposium will provide a forum for scholars, activists, policymakers, practitioners, and students to share their work and discuss how disability is considered in the design, implementation, and evaluation of social policies in different societies. The symposium is jointly organized by the Columbia China Center for Social Policy and the Fordham University Research Consortium on Disability. It is co-sponsored by the Columbia School of Social Work, Weatherhead East Asian Institute, and Fordham University Office of Research.

Agenda: 

Day 1 - Nov. 12, 2020

8:30 to 8:40 am EST - Welcome and opening remarks 

• Speakers:
  • Sophie Mitra, Professor of Economics and Disability Studies, Fordham University
  • Qin Gao, Professor of Social Policy and Social Work, Columbia University
  • Z. George Hong, Professor, Chief Research Officer & Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs, Fordham University
  • Melissa D. Begg, Dean & Professor, Columbia University School of Social Work  

8:40 to 9:20 am EST - 1st Day Plenary 

• Speaker: Vandana Chaudhry, City University of New York (CUNY) Department of Social Work  

9:25 to 10:25 am EST- Parallel session 1a: Employment policies and laws (Moderated by Douglas Kruse)

• The disability employment quota: between social policy and antidiscrimination (By Anne Revillard)
• Disability employment in urban China: developing trend and policy implications (By Yang Lixiong)
• Dismantling barriers to equality at work: an examination of disability-inclusive policymaking in 193 countries (By Willetta Waisath, Elizabeth Wong, and Jody Heymann)

9:25 to 10:25 am EST - Parallel session 1b: Gender (Moderated by Janna Heymann)

• Social inclusion perception and support seeking experiences among parents of young children with autism in Beijing, China (By Xiaoran Wang)
• The experiences of married women in Palestine who acquire a disability: polygamy, divorce or banishment (By Dimity Peter and Itaf Elkhateeb)
• Violence against women with disabilities in the global south: evidence from the demographic and health survey (By Justine Hervé)

10:30 to 11:30 am EST - Parallel session 2a: Social protection (Moderated by Alex Cote)

• Access to and impact of the disability allowance in the Maldives (By Morgon Banks & Shaffa Hameed)
• Disabilities and social benefits: what can we learn from household budget surveys? (By Mario Spiezio)
• Reaching marginalised people with disability in major disability policy reform (By Karen R Fisher, Sandra Gendera, and Rosemary Kayess)

10:30 to 11:30 am EST - Parallel session 2b: COVID-19 (Moderated by Maria Martinho)

• Ventilator users in the time of COVID-19 (By Brooke Ellison and Michelle Balla)
• Constructing the support system with Chinese characteristics for the disabled under the Covid-19 pandemic period (By Zhu Wenxuan, Xu Yanxiao, and Jiang Chuanzen)
• A pre-COVID 19 assessment of disability inequalities in the global south (By Wei Chen, Justine Hervé, Sophie Mitra, and Jaclyn Yap) 

Day 2 - Nov. 13, 2020

8:30 to 9:30 am EST - Parallel session 3a: Long term care (Moderated by Amy Horowitz)

• Community-based long term care to adult with intellectual disability: a Chinese alternativ approach against the article 19 of UN convention on the rights of person with disability (By Jing Li)
• The economic effects of long-term care insurance: evidence from Korea (By Hoolda Kim, Sophie Mitra, and Qin Gao)
• Personal and policy considerations for planning and implementing self-directed supports and disability benefits: results from action research (By Meira L. Orentlicher, Marian Frattarola-Saulino, Kathleen Perry, and Izel Obermeyer)

8:30 to 9:30 am EST - Parallel session 3b: Extra costs (Moderated by Daniel Mont)

• Extra health and health-related costs of living with disabilities and chronic diseases among rural and urban elders in China (By Yalu Zhang and Qin Gao)
• Policies that compensate for the extra costs of living with a disability: A comparative analysis of three welfare regimes with lessons for the United States (By Zachary Morris, Stephen McGarity, and Nanette Goodman)
• Direct and indirect costs of disability amongst working-aged people with disabilities in Dhaka, Bangladesh and Nairobi, Kenya (By Morgon Banks, Shaffa Hameed, Ola Abu Alghaib, Emily Nyariki, Joyce Olenja, and Tom Shakespeare)

9:35 to 10:35 am EST - Parallel session 4a: Poverty and Inequality (Moderated by Christine Fountain)

• A tale of triple disadvantages: disability and poverty dynamics amongst women in rural Bangladesh (By Vidya Diwakar)
• Stigma of persons with disabilities in South Africa: uncovering the pathway from discrimination to depression and low self-esteem (By Jean-Francois Trani, Jacqueline Moodley, Paul Anand, Lauren Graham, and May Thu Thu Maw)
• Community voices heard: exploring public housing resident needs and assets (By Janna Heyman, Susan Matloff-Nieves, Smita Dewan, Dalys Castro, Nancy Wackstein, Peggy Kelly, G. Lawrence Farmer, and Henry Davis)
• Inequality of opportunities to labor market participation for people with disabilities in Latin America (By Mónica Pinilla-Roncancio and Mauricio Gallardo)

9:35 to 10:35 am EST - Parallel session 4b: Employment (Moderated by Michael Stein)

• How does contingent work affect SSDI benefits? (By Matthew S. Rutledge, Alice Zulkarnain, and Sara Ellen King)
• Disability and employment over the life cycle (By Michael Palmer and Dennis Petrie)
• "Suitable for Massage”: cultural prejudice in the employment policy for the blind and multiple employment movement in China (By Xuehui Li)

10:40 to 11:20 am EST - 2nd Day Plenary

• Speaker: Jody Heymann, UCLA Fielding School of Public Health

11:20 to 11:30 am EST - Concluding remarks

• Speakers: Sophie Mitra and Qin Gao