Nidhi Goyal (born 21 September 1985) is an Indian disability and gender rights activist who has been appointed to the UN Women Executive Director's advisory group.
[1][2] Goyal is the founder and executive director of Mumbai-based NGO Rising Flame[3][4] and works in the areas of sexuality, gender, health and rights for women and girls with disabilities.
[23] Goyal was featured in Mama Cash's #MyBodyIsMine campaign, where she spoke about how women with disabilities are either seen as helpless or as superheroes, but never "normal".
[25][26][27] The report looks at the challenges that women and girls with disabilities who have survived sexual violence face when accessing legal aid and justice.
[32][33] Internationally, Goyal has worked with agencies to build capacities of activists in African and other South-Asian countries to understand the intersections of gender and disability, and how they can engage with United Nations mechanisms.
[3] Goyal emphasised the importance of UN mechanisms or conventions trickling down and influencing national policies and holding governments more accountable.
[34][35][36] Rising Flame has been involved in the #MeToo movement and the campaign 'My Tale Too', which aims to rewrite the narratives of popular movies or novels with disabled people in the lead.
[3] Launched in July 2019, Rising Flame's 'I Can Lead Fellows' is a mentorship and leadership programme for women with disabilities in India, focused on self-development and professional growth.
[38] Goyal says that a program like 'I Can Lead' is needed because of the discriminatory environment that excludes women with disabilities from building an independent and productive future, combined with the lack of social and familial support and resources.
[40] Goyal describes an accessible website as a safe and welcoming space that visitors with disabilities can use with no hitch or bother.
People with reading disabilities or dyslexia, any form of mental health disorder, mild autism spectrum are all able to access our website comfortably.
Goyal says the initiative seeks to enable people with disabilities to situate consent as a natural part of a relationship and a path to pleasure, rather than as something seen exclusively through the lens of danger and violence.
[9] Comedy is something that happened accidentally for Goyal, and she likes to laugh at the prejudices that people hold against her as a woman with a disability.