Why are so few disabled people employed, compared with non-disabled people? How should governments and employers close the so-called disability employment gap? These are thorny issues.

The gap remains wide globally – even in the US and Europe, where anti-discrimination policies have become law, the gap averages out at about 20%. This is an important issue: one billion people – some 15% of the world’s population - live with a disability.

Being denied the opportunity to work when you want to and are able to is frustrating for disabled people. The right to work is recognised in both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. But breaking the vicious cycle of poverty, disability and discrimination, especially for women, is not easy.

A Harvard study found that disability and age were the top reasons for discrimination – outranking race and gender.

Firstly, disability discrimination doesn’t start in the labour market, it starts in school. The OECD did an international study which found that disabled young people leave school earlier than their non-disabled peers, and are doing so earlier than previous generations. That puts them at a disadvantage in the jobs market.

Secondly, once the job market is reached, attitudes towards disabled jobseekers are more likely to be negative. A Harvard University study of prejudice found that disability and age were top reasons for discrimination – outranking race and gender. Similarly, a survey for British charity Scope found that some young people, particularly men, remain biased, especially against people with mental health conditions and learning difficulties (the groups least likely to be employed).

Attitudes change when you work with people who were previously excluded, and adjust around their particular needs. When I was news editor at Disability Now magazine, several years ago, we employed almost all disabled members of staff as journalists, with a range of impairments. It wasn’t always easy – I can remember having to read out the party political conference programmes, for example, as no version was provided for people with visual impairments and the journalist who was covering them was blind.

The magazine was always out on time. We broke stories that were followed up by the national press on major issues such as disability hate crime, where we phone-bashed, gathered data and ran an entire campaign, and thealumni have gone on to prestigious jobs at employers including the BBC and the Red Cross. This, however, is the exception, rather than the rule.

Under the current administration in the UK, the disability employment gap has widened. More recently, the frustrations that disabled people have voiced about the challenges they face to either get a job or keep one (to me, and to other journalists) have a familiar ring to them. The support that could keep them in work is often reassessed, and sometimes the aids that disabled people need to work are taken away from them – Motability cars, for example, hoists for toileting or even sign language interpreters.

But although I’ve always favoured legal redress in glaring cases of disability discrimination, it is a blunt instrument; quotas do not achieve the more subtle change that is needed – to dispel stigma – or get many disabled people into jobs.

Other measures work better. According to George Selvanera of the Business Disability Forum, visible disabled role models, peer support networks and employment networks are a much more effective way of narrowing the employment gap. “We want talented people who will be good in their roles,” he says, praising the companies which are “best in class”, such as Barclays, Lloyds and Sainsbury’s, all of which employ disabled employees and adjust around their particular conditions.

“Quotas and those sorts of regulations lead to a compliance focus.”

“My impression is that stigma and prejudice are central in the lack of effectiveness of some positive measures.” Stanislao Maldonado

Things are not much better in the US, where disability discrimination is also outlawed, but the employment gap is 46%. In fact, when the US introduced the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990, the numbers of disabled Americans in work actually went down.

There are a number of reasons for this, explains Alex Ghenis of the World Institute on Disability: “Many government benefits in the US include earnings and asset limits that serve as work disincentives for people with disabilities who would otherwise seek employment. For example, individuals on Social Security Disability Income (SSDI) lose their entire monthly benefit, which may be up to $2,600 or more, if they earn over $1,090 monthly.”

Peru, which has one of the highest disability employment gap in the world (45%), has tried to narrow it through a range of measures, including small-scale local projects and even a construction project, with some success, says Stanislao Maldonado, of Universidad del Rosario in Bogota. Maldonado also recommends increasing disabled people’s access to education.

However, many disabled people do not seek work and even if they do, are unlikely to gain employment “due to their lower levels of human capital” in developing countries generally, according to Maldonado. He adds: “My impression is that stigma and prejudice are central in explaining the lack of effectiveness of some of the positive discrimination measures.”

In Europe, despite a range of legislative and policy objectives to crack down on discrimination, the employment gap varies widely between different countries, such as Sweden (just 9.5%) and Hungary, where it soars to 37 percentage points. Hungary has an infamous record of segregating both disabled and Roma people (who are often treated as if they are disabled, even when they are not). Inclusion, from early years education onwards, seems to be key if the employment gap years later is to be addressed.

Across the world, the stigma of disability stains human relationships - but better, deeper relationships between disabled and non-disabled people (friendship, marriage, family and work) are also our best chance of change. They merge with another crucial factor: education.

A recent US paper on the disability employment gap suggested that individual characteristics were key to closing the gap. Very young, older people, Asians, Hispanics, women, married people and those with higher educational qualifications were more likely to be in employment.

The authors of the paper concluded that the greatest factor was education. Another factor that boosts employment is peer support – disabled people gain heart from seeing others in the workplace.

This week we’re focusing on the issue of disability rights around the world. Please get in touch with your experiences, comments and stories; email us at globaldevpros@theguardian.com, with disability rights in the subject line, or add your experiences here.



Join our community of development professionals and humanitarians. Follow @GuardianGDP on Twitter. Join the conversation with the hashtag #DisabilityRights