Gendered Experience of Disability

Disability & Society, 2016

Contemporary Sociology, 1985

Agenda, 2015

disability prefigures, modifies and codifies possibilities and regulates everyday life. Disability discourse therefore affects everyone. As an embodied possibility, 97% of impairments are acquired rather than congenital and about 10% of the population has a disability (Goodley, 2011). Accidents, ageing, warfare, food insecurity, poverty, structural violence, gendered violence and its varied manifestations, unsafe labour practices, limited healthcare services and all the ongoing vicissitudes of living in fragile bodies with sensitive psyches means impairment in some form or other awaits most people. Breaking the binary of disabled and able-bodied, the term Temporarily Able Bodied (Marks, 1999) is often used by disability activists to extend solidarity. Disability studies provides crucial insights into, amongst others, subjectivity, identities, embodiment, epistemology, ontology, methodology, pedagogy, practices and resources for citizenship, representation, the relation between language and materiality, institutional praxis, exclusion and inclusion, capital, liberalism and neoliberalism, spatiality and the built environment. Disability figures in racialised and heteronormative ideas about sexualities when certain sexualities like LGBT and black desire and sexual expression are pathologised and treated as deviant. Un/desirable body types, female genital cutting and male circumcision, whether bodies should have either a penis or a vagina and be corrected if they have both, ideas about women's hysteria and black men's hypermasculinity, are mediated by discourses on 'proper' gendered behaviour and bodies.

Research on humanities and social sciences, 2016

Gender and disability are aspects that are situated in a cultural matrix not divorced from socio- economic and historical contexts. From these contexts, people with disabilities’ capabilities are either expanded or limited as power dynamics come into play. This paper argues that while men and women experience disability, the experience of disability is heightened by gender. While it is easy for a disabled man to be tolerated and to be married the situation is different for disabled women and girls who are seen as a drain on already stretched resources. The paper notes that specific research focusing on experiences of disability in higher education is very limited. It is even worse when specific gendered analysis of disabilities is of concern. In an attempt to fit into that research gap, this paper focus on how the existing literature has treated the gender dimension of disability. The conceptual paper is guided by the capabilities theory. This theory or approach is a broad normative...

Women and girls with disabilities face multiple discrimination due to their gender and disability state. Therefore, this paper provides an overview on how this discrimination manifests itself in many domains of life like in the access to education, healthcare services, work and employment, social protection and political participation. Likewise, this paper examines the international legal frameworks relevant for addressing the multiple discrimination based on gender and disability. The paper ends with conclusion and recommendations.

Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, 1981

The position of the disabled woman in current U.S. society deserves political, theoretical and empirical attention. In this paper we have delineated the economic, social and psychological constraints which place her at a distinct disadvantage, relative to disabled men and nondisabled women. We evaluate the ways in which having a disability is viewed as an impediment to traditional or nontraditional sex role development. The construct rolelessness is introduced, defined and examined. We conclude with reconmiendations for needed research and policy. Disability strikes one in every eleven Americans. It will be argued in this paper that disability is a more severely handicapping condition for women than for men. While 47% of the 11 million disabled American adults are women, the effects of disability appear to be significantly greater for 9.9% of women than for the 10.9% of men who are classified as disabled (President's Commiteee on Employment for the Handicapped, US DHEW, 1978). In this paper we examine the profile of the disabled woman, propose a theoretical explanation of rolelessness imposed upon disabled women, speculate about how to fortify the roles and resources available to these women and advance policy implications for this population.

Women's Studies International Forum, 1998

Synopsis-This paper analyses how disability informs and complicates gender identity for women with disabilities and demonstrates that disability is a feminist issue. The first section underscores the dual silence of women with disabilities who remain largely unheard of, both in feminist literature and in the disability rights movement. The status of women with disabilities in the United States reflects their position as an oppressed group in terms of educational opportunity, rehabilitation and vocational program access, occupational attainment, economic status, and social outlets. The second section of this paper suggests possible points of entry into several debates within feminist literature that would be broadened or transformed by a disability perspective. Issues of reproductive rights, control of women's bodies, newborn's right to treatment, the construction of gender as informed by disability, and sexual representations are among the issues analyzed. Finally, the last section of this paper analyzes various strategies for change, including standpoint or minority models and strategies within feminist thought that may be useful or emancipatory for women with disabilities.

American Journal of Community Psychology, 2007

Community psychologists have called for research on human diversity and interactions between individuals and society with a focus on oppression. This study examines learning disabilities as they cooccur with other sociopolitical minority statuses. We examined dominant cultural narratives of and individual responses to learning disability, race/ethnicity and gender identified by low-income men and women of color with learning disabilities. Our qualitative analysis identified cultural narratives that suggest that: (1a) individuals with learning disabilities are perceived as having an illegitimate impairment and being of lower intellectual ability and unworthy; (1b) having an invisible disability facilitates passing as nondisabled, thereby lessening disability discrimination from within racial/ethnic groups; (1c) having a learning disability detracts from positive gender expectations and exacerbates negative ones; and (1d) gender and racial/ethnic narratives are relevant for individuals with learning disabilities. Our analysis also identified two overarching individual acts of resistance used to thwart internalization of oppressive cultural narratives: (2a) removing self from oppressive environments and (2b) reframing dominant cultural narratives (including discounting the validity of negative messages, using negative narratives for motivation, and engaging in positive self-talk). We discuss findings in relation to extant research and theory and consider implications for research, theory, and practice.