This article, by Rochelle Jones, has been reproduced here courtesy of
the Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID). Source: AWID
Resource Net Friday File, Issue 268, Friday March 31, 2006.



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?



''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 organizations
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.



NB: References are available from WWDA on request.


Cathie Phoeda & Kerri Thorne
ANZ Project Workers