The National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) review recommends improvements for First Nations people, understanding of culturally diverse concepts of disability and care, and advocates for LGBTIQ+ people. It acknowledges that women with disabilities face barriers to access support. Despite feedback suggesting a gender strategy as necessary, final recommendations remain vague on gender inequalities in NDIS.

Women with disabilities are more likely to experience intimate partner violence and have lower NDIS participation rates. Women comprise the majority of carers for people with disabilities; hence they are also the primary carers of child NDIS participants. The NDIS system seemingly replicates gender biases in the medical system. Women often wait longer for diagnoses, and gendered differences in symptom interpretation prevail.

Chronic conditions, which predominantly affect women, can display fluctuating symptoms, and while the NDIS review addresses psychosocial disabilities, it fails to address episodic disabilities more broadly. NDIS suggests abolishing lists of conditions that make people eligible for support and focusing on functional impact instead.

Women bear the burden of applying and reapplying to the NDIS after being deemed ineligible. Women with chronic conditions are also among the majority who don’t meet NDIS access requirements. Hence, the review calls for explicit data collection for participants disaggregated by gender and sexuality. Without addressing gender bias, women risk continuing to experience exclusion from the NDIS.