Feminism and Disability Articles - Second Go!
Here are the articles mentioned in my previous post. Thanks innoxia_!
Resource Net Friday File
Issue 268
Friday March 31, 2006
1) Women with disabilities: Doubly disadvantaged or overlooked?
AWID interviews Cristina Francisco from Circle of Women with Disabilities
(CIMUDIS) in the Dominican Republic about the intersection of feminism,
discrimination and disability.
By Rochelle Jones
2) 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
___________________________________________
1) Women with disabilities: Doubly disadvantaged or overlooked?
AWID interviews Cristina Francisco from Circle of Women with Disabilities
(CIMUDIS) in the Dominican Republic about the intersection of feminism,
discrimination and disability.
By Rochelle Jones
AWID: Circle of Women with Disabilities (CIMUDIS) is an organization in The
Dominican Republic that is focused on the participation and leadership of
women with motor, auditory and visual disabilities. Can you tell us some
more about CIMUDIS and the women involved?
CF: CIMUDIS was founded in March 1998, and is the only organization in the
Dominican Republic where all disabilities are integrated (for example,
paraplegics, blind and deaf). We also have members in four regional areas
in our country (14 regional groups), where the poverty and discrimination
are stronger than in the metropolitan areas. There are more than 450
members. The focus of our work is the education and sensitisation of
communities, in order to change negative perceptions about women with
disabilities.
AWID: What barriers do women with disabilities face in the Dominican
Republic, and how are women overcoming these barriers on a daily basis?
CF: The principal barriers we have to face every day are structural and
mental. This is a big obstacle for women to study, and to obtain
remunerative work. Another daily barrier is transportation, because in the
Dominican Republic, there are no vehicles adapted for people with
disabilities.
Some old cultures and misperceptions about women with disabilities are the
other major barriers facing us in our communities. These include the
perception that we can’t have a family, don’t have any sexuality, and that
we don’t have feelings - we only exists to be inside the home, caring for
children, cooking etc).
In CIMUDIS we know that to face these challenges, is necessary to be
proactive. For this reason we conduct many seminars and courses of
leadership throughout the year.
AWID: Do you think that women with disabilities have generally been
marginalised within larger feminist movements?
CF: Yes, that’s true. For many years we have been looking for the
recognition of other women’s groups.
AWID: To what extent has this marginalisation taken place, and how has this
affected the achievement of rights for women with disabilities?
CF: This situation is because the larger feminist movements really don’t
know this sector. There is a common misperception about women with
disabilities as being sick, not as a group finding their rights. For this
reason, we are often overlooked and not integrated into feminist agendas.
In saying this, however, in every space, such as activities, or seminars
about gender or similar, when feminists are together and present, we are
all getting closer. In the last two years, for example, we have had
meetings and activities with some groups. Recently we had a very
important encounter with different women’s groups, and this event was made
possible with the support of the International Institute for Studies and
Research of Women -INSTRAW- in the Dominican Republic.
AWID: CIMUDIS was recently awarded one of the Innovation Seed Grants from
AWID, for a ‘Regional Meeting of Women with Disabilities to Strengthen,
Leadership, Alliances and their Participation in Latin America’. What do
you hope to achieve at this meeting?
CF: We hope to meet with other women leaders with disabilities from Latin
America, such as Ecuador, El Salvador, Peru, Guatemala, Cuba and others. At
this meeting we hope to share the experiences of the AWID Forum and to
motivate each other for the creation of women’s organisations in each
country. We want to strengthen the participation of women in this sector
with the ultimate objective being to create a network of women with
disabilities in Latin America and the Caribbean.
AWID: What can international feminist and women’s movements learn from
women with disabilities?
CF: They 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.
With more barriers and discrimination, we are most vulnerable to poverty.
What can international feminists and women’s movements learn from women
with disabilities? We can’t walk, see or hear, but with our courage,
together, we will create a space for all in society. Our voices for our
rights will be stronger!!!
______________________________________
2) 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
‘’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
---------------------
RESOURCE NET is brought to you by The Association for Women’s Rights in
Development (AWID). Announcements posted on this discussion list do not
necessarily reflect the opinion of AWID, but are meant to provoke thought,
generate solutions and inspire action.
-
This list is only open to members of AWID. You can become a member at
www.awid.org/members. To remove yourself from this list, send an email with
your request to membership@awid.org. AWID produces e-lists in English,
Spanish and French. If you are a member of AWID and would like to subscribe
to the Spanish or French lists, please email your request to
membership@awid.org.
-
To contribute to Resource Net write to contribute@awid.org.
-
You are free to replicate AWID’s information in other formats, and use it
in your advocacy, provided you give credit to the Association.
-
AWID is an international membership organization committed to gender
equality and a just and sustainable development process. AWID facilitates
an open exchange among researchers, practitioners, policymakers and others
in order to develop effective and transformative approaches for improving
the lives of women and girls worldwide. If you are not already a member of
AWID, please visit our web site at www.awid.org to find out more.
-
The Association for Women’s Rights in Development
215 Spadina Avenue, Suite 150
Toronto, ON M5T 2C7
CANADA
Tel: 416-594-3773
Fax: 416-594-0330
Email: awid@awid.org
Web: www.awid.org
Resource Net Friday File
Issue 268
Friday March 31, 2006
1) Women with disabilities: Doubly disadvantaged or overlooked?
AWID interviews Cristina Francisco from Circle of Women with Disabilities
(CIMUDIS) in the Dominican Republic about the intersection of feminism,
discrimination and disability.
By Rochelle Jones
2) 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
___________________________________________
1) Women with disabilities: Doubly disadvantaged or overlooked?
AWID interviews Cristina Francisco from Circle of Women with Disabilities
(CIMUDIS) in the Dominican Republic about the intersection of feminism,
discrimination and disability.
By Rochelle Jones
AWID: Circle of Women with Disabilities (CIMUDIS) is an organization in The
Dominican Republic that is focused on the participation and leadership of
women with motor, auditory and visual disabilities. Can you tell us some
more about CIMUDIS and the women involved?
CF: CIMUDIS was founded in March 1998, and is the only organization in the
Dominican Republic where all disabilities are integrated (for example,
paraplegics, blind and deaf). We also have members in four regional areas
in our country (14 regional groups), where the poverty and discrimination
are stronger than in the metropolitan areas. There are more than 450
members. The focus of our work is the education and sensitisation of
communities, in order to change negative perceptions about women with
disabilities.
AWID: What barriers do women with disabilities face in the Dominican
Republic, and how are women overcoming these barriers on a daily basis?
CF: The principal barriers we have to face every day are structural and
mental. This is a big obstacle for women to study, and to obtain
remunerative work. Another daily barrier is transportation, because in the
Dominican Republic, there are no vehicles adapted for people with
disabilities.
Some old cultures and misperceptions about women with disabilities are the
other major barriers facing us in our communities. These include the
perception that we can’t have a family, don’t have any sexuality, and that
we don’t have feelings - we only exists to be inside the home, caring for
children, cooking etc).
In CIMUDIS we know that to face these challenges, is necessary to be
proactive. For this reason we conduct many seminars and courses of
leadership throughout the year.
AWID: Do you think that women with disabilities have generally been
marginalised within larger feminist movements?
CF: Yes, that’s true. For many years we have been looking for the
recognition of other women’s groups.
AWID: To what extent has this marginalisation taken place, and how has this
affected the achievement of rights for women with disabilities?
CF: This situation is because the larger feminist movements really don’t
know this sector. There is a common misperception about women with
disabilities as being sick, not as a group finding their rights. For this
reason, we are often overlooked and not integrated into feminist agendas.
In saying this, however, in every space, such as activities, or seminars
about gender or similar, when feminists are together and present, we are
all getting closer. In the last two years, for example, we have had
meetings and activities with some groups. Recently we had a very
important encounter with different women’s groups, and this event was made
possible with the support of the International Institute for Studies and
Research of Women -INSTRAW- in the Dominican Republic.
AWID: CIMUDIS was recently awarded one of the Innovation Seed Grants from
AWID, for a ‘Regional Meeting of Women with Disabilities to Strengthen,
Leadership, Alliances and their Participation in Latin America’. What do
you hope to achieve at this meeting?
CF: We hope to meet with other women leaders with disabilities from Latin
America, such as Ecuador, El Salvador, Peru, Guatemala, Cuba and others. At
this meeting we hope to share the experiences of the AWID Forum and to
motivate each other for the creation of women’s organisations in each
country. We want to strengthen the participation of women in this sector
with the ultimate objective being to create a network of women with
disabilities in Latin America and the Caribbean.
AWID: What can international feminist and women’s movements learn from
women with disabilities?
CF: They 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.
With more barriers and discrimination, we are most vulnerable to poverty.
What can international feminists and women’s movements learn from women
with disabilities? We can’t walk, see or hear, but with our courage,
together, we will create a space for all in society. Our voices for our
rights will be stronger!!!
______________________________________
2) 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
‘’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
---------------------
RESOURCE NET is brought to you by The Association for Women’s Rights in
Development (AWID). Announcements posted on this discussion list do not
necessarily reflect the opinion of AWID, but are meant to provoke thought,
generate solutions and inspire action.
-
This list is only open to members of AWID. You can become a member at
www.awid.org/members. To remove yourself from this list, send an email with
your request to membership@awid.org. AWID produces e-lists in English,
Spanish and French. If you are a member of AWID and would like to subscribe
to the Spanish or French lists, please email your request to
membership@awid.org.
-
To contribute to Resource Net write to contribute@awid.org.
-
You are free to replicate AWID’s information in other formats, and use it
in your advocacy, provided you give credit to the Association.
-
AWID is an international membership organization committed to gender
equality and a just and sustainable development process. AWID facilitates
an open exchange among researchers, practitioners, policymakers and others
in order to develop effective and transformative approaches for improving
the lives of women and girls worldwide. If you are not already a member of
AWID, please visit our web site at www.awid.org to find out more.
-
The Association for Women’s Rights in Development
215 Spadina Avenue, Suite 150
Toronto, ON M5T 2C7
CANADA
Tel: 416-594-3773
Fax: 416-594-0330
Email: awid@awid.org
Web: www.awid.org