Gendering Disability

Disability and gender are becoming increasingly complex in light of recent politics and scholarship. This volume provides findings not only about the discrimination practised against women and people with disabilities, but also about the productive parallelism between the two categories.

This is the first book to explore the interplay of disability, gender and violence over the life course from researcher, practitioner and survivor perspectives. It gives due weight to the accounts of disabled children and adults who have survived institutional or individual violence, evidencing barriers to recognition, disclosure and reporting. Written by disabled and non-disabled women from around the world, Disability, Gender and Violence over the Life Course addresses the dearth of voices and experiences of disabled women and girls in empirical research, policy and practice on issues of violence, victimisation, protection, support and prevention. Divided into three parts – Childhood, Adulthood and Older Life – this collection offers diverse perspectives on the intersectionality of disability, age, ethnicity, sexuality and violence that have hitherto been absent. This book will be an invaluable resource for students and practitioners of multiple fields of practice and academic studies, including health and social care, nursing, social work, childhood studies, gender studies, disability studies, safeguarding and child protection, equality and human rights, sociology and criminology.

This book explores the gendered experience of disability. It investigates how women with disabilities fare in society focusing on the experiences of women and their interactions with family, society and medical and legal institutions. Women with disabilities face unprecedented levels of violence, oppression and marginalisation in their daily lives as well as a lack of visibility, proper care and opportunities for socio-economic development. This book examines the reasons and consequences of the stigmatisation of disabilities and neurodivergence, denial of proper care, and various forms of exclusion and violence women with disabilities face both within and outside of their homes. It brings together the perspectives of academicians and activists that try and understand the various challenges faced by women with disabilities and highlights the fight for their right to autonomy, respect, equality, and justice. Filling the gap in the existing feminist research, this revised edition seeks to influence the way in which society treats women with disabilities and will be of interest to scholars and researchers in the field of women's rights, disability rights, rehabilitation, social policy, and the body.

'This is a welcome addition to the literature on women with disabilities... it is a good resource for those working in international development, whether they are scholars, women with disabilities or policymakers' - Gender and Development This volume consists of critical and theoretical articles about women with disabilities in both developed and developing countries. Disabled women and their place in these societies has been a subject that has been neglected in the past, therefore these essays will fill a gap in the evolving literature on disability studies. The nature of the problems faced by disabled women are such that they need to be addressed by both the feminist and disability movements. But the fact is that they remain invisible within the women's movement at large. This volume, therefore, attempts to provide a space to women with disabilities in the global feminist literature and movement.

Sarah D. Phillips examines the struggles of disabled persons in Ukraine and the other former Soviet states to secure their rights during the tumultuous political, economic, and social reforms of the last two decades. Through participant observation and interviews with disabled Ukrainians across the social spectrum -- rights activists, politicians, students, workers, entrepreneurs, athletes, and others -- Phillips documents the creative strategies used by people on the margins of postsocialist societies to assert claims to "mobile citizenship." She draws on this rich ethnographic material to argue that public storytelling is a powerful means to expand notions of relatedness, kinship, and social responsibility, and which help shape a more tolerant and inclusive society.

This book explores gender, disability and literature in the Global South concentrating on Nepal in particular. Religious and cultural values disable women’s autonomy in general, and create even greater disadvantages for women who are physically disabled. This study examines two Nepali women writers Bishnu Kumari Waiwa and Jhamak Ghimire who challenge stigmas of the disabled body by deconstructing the “ideology of ability” through their autobiographical narratives. They do this by celebrating sexuality and disability as sources of creativity, agency, and identity in narratives that deconstruct cultural or social models of sexuality, motherhood, and beauty. In this thesis feminist disability and feminist theory guide an analysis of Waiwa and Ghimire’s writing to advance our understanding of gender, culture, disability and literature in the Global South.

More than 1 billion people worldwide have a disability, and they are all affected by politics. This two-volume work explores key topics at the heart of disability policy, such as voting, race, gender, age, health care, social security, transportation, abuse, and the environment. Disability policy is no longer an area that can be adequately addressed within major areas of public policy such as welfare, health, labor, and education. Disability has become widely acknowledged in recent decades, partly because of the increasing number of disabled citizens across all demographic populations. Advocates argue that diversity of all kinds deserves recognition and accommodation. This set examines policies targeting disability to provide a multifaceted description of the political participation of people with disabilities as well as disability policy development in the United States. The first volume focuses on political participation and voting issues, and the second volume covers disability public policy. In these two volumes, numerous scholars and experts in the social sciences and humanities explore timely topics that are key to disability policy questions, including activism, voting, race, gender, age, health care, social security, civil rights, abuse, the environment, and even death. Readers will better understand the challenges that policymakers face in grappling with controversies over issues of social engineering and public policy, often attempting to reconcile majority experience with minority rights. The chapters analyze the history of disability politics, describe the disability policy infrastructure as it currently exists in the United States, and provide insight into current disability-related controversies.

Disability can be either an ascribed status or an achieved status and its combination with other statuses will affect the person's social experiences. This issue challenges critical thinking about the interrelationships with disability. It questions if the concepts and methods of intersectionality can be applied to disability at all.