Disability issues are feminist issues.

Feminists have helped reveal the complex interactions between gender, race,
sexuality and class and how they cut across and influence poverty,
development and rights. But what about disability?

By Rochelle Jones - AWID

''Disability issues, like feminist issues, stem from common roots of
prejudice, discrimination and oppression, where the personal becomes
political, and… the borders and divisions start to blur around the shape of
a complex identity'' [1]

According to Human Rights Watch [2], women constitute 75 percent of the
disabled population in low and middle-income countries due to gender
discrimination in the allocation of resources and access to services. This
data sheds different light on the feminisation of poverty and how gender
and disability represent women in different ways.

Representation structures reality…

Maria Barile argues that the exclusion of women with disabilities occurs at
different levels, and that the more layers of difference a person has from
those who determine the norms, the further that person is positioned from
power [3]. Being a poor, black woman with a disability, for example, means
that she is positioned at a level that is the furthest away from the rich,
white, non-disabled man – the group that currently determine and maintain
the hegemonic structures (and margins) of power and privilege. Within the
disability sector itself, however, there are also differing levels of
discrimination depending on where you live and whether you are a man or a
woman. For example, women with disabilities are twice as unlikely to be in
paid employment as men with disabilities [4]. But the most salient point is
that women with disabilities suffer discrimination by non-disabled women as
well. Just as women's needs have traditionally been usurped by other ''more
important'' areas of social, political and economic instability, women with
disabilities have simply been misrepresented and overlooked.

Women with disabilities face the same types of human rights abuses that
non-disabled women face, but social isolation, stigmatisation and
dependence amplifies these abuses and their results. Women who suffer from
domestic violence and abuse in their homes are already in a dangerous
situation unless they can access support networks. Women with disabilities,
however, face high levels of violence and abuse, as well as issues of
mobility, and a dearth of support services that actually cater for
disabilities. Where disadvantage seems to escalate with disability and
gender, access to help and assistance decreases. This occurs in the North
as well as the South.

The disability rights movements have been active for decades to advocate
for policies and laws which protect the rights of people with disabilities,
and since 2001 there has been considerable movement towards an international
treaty on disability rights [5], with a draft Convention near completion as
of February 2006 [6]. Thanks to vibrant disability rights movements in many
different countries, disability itself has moved away from the realms of
medicine, social work and rehabilitation to that of identity politics and
human rights.

For women, however, it is the same struggle for visibility amongst
structures that have been determined and governed by men. Women with
disabilities, who face unique human rights abuses and to a greater level
than men, in many cases remain marginalised and excluded in holistic
approaches to disability that treat every person as ‘equal' regardless of
their gender, race, sexuality, class etc. Like the journeys that have taken
place within women's rights movements across the world, it is the centres of
power and wealth that have tended to dominate disability studies and the
disability rights landscape, and as a result the most marginalised people –
the poor, women, people of colour – have had their voices thwarted.

Reimagining women – Disability and feminism

The commonalities between women's rights and disability rights struggles
are difficult to ignore. As Garland-Thomson notes: ''the pronouncements in
disability studies of what we need to start addressing are precisely issues
that feminist theory has been grappling with for years'' [7]. It is not just
the fact that feminist analyses of gender, race and class can provide
insight and inform analyses of disability and vice versa, but more
importantly because women with disabilities are an integral part of women's
rights movements and face the same struggles and the same structures that
marginalise and exclude, but at deeper and more profound levels – both
outside and inside women's rights movements.

In this context, feminist and women's rights movements and organisations
have an obligation to integrate disability rights into their agendas,
because like sexism and racism, disability is structured by social
oppression and discrimination. In addition, there is a critical need to
recognise that focusing on disability as a minority issue within women's
rights is disempowering to disabled women. The discourse within the
disability rights movements is positive and empowering, just like the
discourse within the women's rights movements that treats women as agents
of change rather than passive victims. Disabled women are too quickly
labelled ‘dependent' because they need assistance with the every day tasks
of living, but as one disabled feminist has written: ''Independence is not
about doing everything for yourself but about having control over how help
is provided''[8].

As we move forward in our journeys of reimagining women and women's rights
agendas, we realise that this statement can apply to every context.
Cristina Francisco aptly explained in the above interview how global
feminist movements ''have to know that is not possible to speak about
empowerment and progress for women when other groups, such as women with
disabilities, are suffering discrimination and violation of their rights,
and don't have the same opportunities to participate.'' Once disabled women
have control over how their voices are integrated into wider feminist
movements, then they will not only be participating in feminist agendas,
they will be setting the agendas that are most relevant to them.


Notes:
[1] Alessandra Iantaffi, 2001. ''Disabled Women's Lives'' in Women in
Action, available from http://www.isiswomen.org/pub/wia/wia201
[2] Human Rights Watch – ''Women and Girls with Disabilities'' available
from www.hrw.org
[3] Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, ''Integrating Disability, Transforming
Feminist Theory'' in NWSA Journal Volume 14, No.3. Available from:
http://iupress.indiana.edu/journals/nwsa14-3.html
[4] See Note 2.
[5] See Note 2.
[6]See UN Enable, http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/enable/rights/ahc7.htm
[7] Ibid Note 3.
[8] Jenny Morris, 1998. Feminism, Gender and Disability. Text of a paper
presented at a seminar in Sydney, Australia. Available from
http://www.leeds.ac.uk/disability-studies/archiveuk/morris/gender%20and%20disability.pdf