Independent and Successful Women with Disability: Lesson Learned from West Sumatera Province

. Law No. 8 of 2016 concerning people with disabilities in Article 1 states that people with disabilities are every person who experiences physical, intellectual, mental, and / or sensorics limitations for a long period of time who in interacting with the environment may experience obstacles and difficulties to fully and effectively participate with other citizen based on an equal right. Women with disabilities have equal rights with women without disabilities. However, they often experience discrimination because they are not considered independent. They work to make ends meet and improve social skills to be independence. The lack of diverse job opportunities for women with disabilities makes them choose to work in the business sector even though there are women with disabilities who have careers in the government sector. The existence of support, equal opportunity and room for participation are factors that encourage women with disabilities to be empowered. The elimination of discrimination against gender and disabilities will provide great opportunities for women with disabilities to step forward, be empowered and creative. This research will discuss how women with disabilities to be empowered and survive from discrimination they experienced so that they success in career, daily life and how women with disabilities participate in economic development, especially in the family economy. The purposes of this research are to identify the factors that enable women with disabilities to be success, to explore the role of "social milleu" (family, friendship, community) and to provide support to women with disabilities. This type of research is descriptive-qualitative research or case study type, which is a type of research that describes the state of an object or event without an intention to draw general conclusions. Qualitative method is “a research procedure that produces descriptive data in the form of written or spoken words from people and observable behavior. In collecting data about the respondent's determination, the researcher uses the life history method with narrative data analysis. The result of this research is that there is a role model for other women with disabilities to survive from the discrimination they experienced. Then the results of the next research on the journey of women with disabilities who are able to survive from the discrimination they received so that they are successful in their careers in the public sector are divided into 4 topics. The first topic is life before they become people with disabilities. The second topic talks about accident causing their physical disability. The third topic is about how these participants accept the transition from person without disability to person with physical disability and how they overcome obstacles when they become people with physical disabilities. The fourth topic talks about the participants' lives to survive and succeed in building their career at public sector.