WOMEN, DISABILITY, AND IDENTITY
This brief list focuses on what is "normal," invisible disabilities, and how women with disabilities identify with themselves and/or how society and culture may define them. There are many more representations of women, disability and identity, especially in the section on Feminism; however, these particular resources stand out because of their references to "what is normal”; women dealing with invisible disabilities where people and society perceive them as "normal”; and women with disabilities dealing with typical gender roles and expectations.
Barron, K. (1997, April). The bumpy road to womanhood.
Disability & Society, 12(2), 223-240.
This paper is based on a qualitative study dealing with societal constraints with regard to womanhood for physically disabled young women in Sweden. The findings show that the young women are subjected to stereotyped views on what having an impairment involves and have to deal with certain normative criteria of what constitutes womanhood. Despite being 'children' of their time and culture, i.e. rejecting the traditional subservient role of 'the disabled' and of women generally, the young women yearn for the pursuing of tasks, such as caring for children and the home, closely linked to the traditional role of (non-disabled) women. It is argued that this can be understood as a means of counterbalancing an early acquired role of passive recipient. Alongside a positive identification with the group of 'the disabled', the interviewees strive towards being seen as something other than disabled, i.e. as women.
Ewing, D. W. (2002). Disability and feminism: Goffman revisited.
Journal of Social Work in Disability and Rehabilitation, 1(2), 73-82.
The author concludes that Goffman's description of the difficulties involved in identity management for persons with disabilities are as true now as when
Stigma was first written. However, Goffman was unaware of the interaction between disability and feminism when he wrote
Stigma in 1963. Women with disabilities are subject to additional disadvantages in ways that many professionals may not recognize. Suggestions are offered for human services professionals when working with women who have disabilities.
Ferri, B. A., & Gregg, N. (1998). Women with disabilities: Missing voices.
Women's Studies International Forum, 21(4), 429-439.
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.
Kruse, R. J. (2003, December). Narrating intersections of gender and dwarfism in everyday spaces. In V. Chouinard & V. A. Crooks (Eds.), Disability in society and space [Feature issue].
The Canadian Geographer, 47(4), 494-508.
Dwarfs, midgets, even freaks, are among the terms that have been used to label little people. Feminist theorists have argued that discursive identities of women prevent any meaningful essentialised analysis of their experiences. Similarly, disability researchers have argued against generalising the experiences of disabled individuals. This paper explores the intersection of gender and dwarfism through the narratives of four women who are little people. Findings suggest that the ways women, who are little people, negotiate public spaces are affected by discourses of gender, disability and common conceptions of what is physically normal. Furthermore, these discourses have material implications in the everyday lives of these women. A brief historical overview of dwarfism is followed by narratives that describe experiences in public spaces, perceptions of height related to age and capability, gendered spaces and sexual stereotypes, uncomfortable spaces, violations of personal space and transportation. This paper provides a partial perspective on how discourses of dwarfism are manifest in social spaces and the built environment. Despite these significant commonalities that little people shared with other disabled people, there are sociospatial experiences that appear to be unique to people with dwarfism.
Matheson, L. (2003, January/February). Defined by disability. Special feature: Women and disability [Part II].
Off Our Backs, 33(1/2).
"To be a disabled woman is to be, in the eyes of many, somehow less of a woman, less of a person than the non-disabled people around you. This distinction is arbitrary, and is applied as soon as people find out that you are disabled. They do not need to know anything more-the knowledge that there is something `wrong' with you is enough.”
McMullin, V. (2003, January/February). "Normal" on the outside. Special feature: Women and disability [Part II]. (2003, January/February).
Off Our Backs, 33(1/2).
"About seven years ago I was told that I had Crohn's disease, an inflammatory process that can affect any portion of the digestive tract. Although doctors have come up with a variety of theories, the cause and cure for Crohn's are still a mystery. Most patients with Crohn's disease exhibit severe abdominal pain, rectal bleeding, weight loss and a loss of appetite."
Mintz, S. B. (2002, Fall). Invisible disability: Georgina Kleege’s
Sight Unseen. In K. Q. Hall (Ed.), Feminist Disability Studies [Special issue].
NWSA Journal, 14(3), 155-177.
This essay discusses
Sight Unseen, Georgina Kleege's collection of personal essays about partial blindness from macular degeneration, and explores the challenge Kleege poses to the presumably universal relation between vision, knowledge, and stable subjectivity. I argue that the semiotic and personal analysis Kleege performs in her essays disrupts the entrenched connection between seeing and selfhood whereby the blind are construed as diminished or helpless figures.
Sight Unseen maximizes the specular effects of the autobiographical situation, making transgressively visible the anomalous body that patriarchal discourse has sought to control and that feminist theory has largely ignored as a meaningful category of identity. The text manifests the defining impact of disability on a woman's idea of herself in a culture in which the parameters of normative gendered identity are circulated largely through visual imagery, but in turn contests the ontological primacy of vision by orienting the narrative toward the new focal point of blindness. Unveiling the fictions surrounding sightedness as a stable mode of access to identity and reality, Kleege subverts the dominance of myths of knowledge and mastery granted to the eyes.
Perry, D., & Whiteside, R. K. (1995, September).
Women, gender and disability: Historical and contemporary intersections of “otherness.” Paper presented at the Fourth International Abilympics Conference, Perth, Australia. Retrieved April 3, 2005 from
http://www.academyanalyticarts.org/perrywhiteside.htm.
"Working in an area which is considered to be about something called ‘disability,' poses considerable challenges for any person who wishes to reflect upon the kinds of cultural and historical determinants which underwrite such a concept. Who or what has decided, and still decides, upon the allocation of one person to the 'able' category, and another to the ‘dis’-abled category? To unravel some of these ideas and questions, we will in this paper, focus upon the historical construction of the idea or concept of 'intellectual disability'. We would like to stress however, that most versions and varieties of disability are not mutually exclusive and that the general idea of 'disability' as an homogenising label, (informing as powerfully as it reflects individual and social experience), is always implicated in our discussion. Likewise, the category of 'woman,' as determined by particular and essential qualities (regardless of whether these are understood as biological or cultural in nature) will be considered as often intertwined and enmeshed with concepts about 'disability.' That these determinations and their combinations, are not accidental, arbitrary, natural or self-evident, but reflect particular social and political interests, is the central theme of this paper…."
Schildmann, U. (1999, June).
What is normal? Normality-disability-gender. Lecture at Women’s World 1999: The 7th International Interdisciplinary Congress on Women, Tromso, Norway. Retrieved March 4, 2005 from
http://www.skk.uit.no/WW99/papers/Schildmann_Ulrike.pdf.
“Disability as well as gender are closely connected to a societal phenomenon which is highly influential but at the same time hard to pin down: I am talking about normality. …In th[is] paper, I will demonstrate how normality, disability and gender relate to each other.”
Stone, S. D. (1995). The myth of bodily perfection.
Disability & Society, 10(4), 413-424.
Grounding her arguments in social constructionism, the author examines the myth of bodily perfection in relation to those with disabilities. She argues that this myth plays an integral role in creating a category of people labeled disabled and of relegating them to the status of "other." Stone draws on the experiences of women to discuss the idea of appearance norms and claims that feminist critiques of these norms have virtually ignored the pressures on women who do not have full use of their bodies. Therefore, many women often try to hide their disability or pass for normal. She concludes by arguing that the myth of bodily perfection and appearance norms which deny the experiences of disabled women contribute to the denial of disability and therefore are oppressive. Stone calls for acknowledging disability as a means of honoring humanness.
Watson-Gegeo, K. A. (2005, July-August). Journey to the 'new normal' and beyond: Reflections on learning in a community of practice.
International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 18(4), 399-424.
Through poetry and strips of narrative, this paper discusses the embodied experience of chemical sensitivity and the anthropologist author's and other patients' journey through altered perception towards knowledge, community and transformation in the context of a medical clinic. The narratives are situated in several strands of relevant theory, including Merleau-Ponty's work on the primacy of perception, feminist perspectives on embodied experience and standpoint epistemology, disability studies, identity creation through narrating the self, and Lave and Wenger's situated learning in a community of practice.
Williams, L., & Nind, M. (1999, September). Insiders or outsiders: Normalisation and women with learning difficulties.
Disability & Society, 14(5), 659-672.
This paper examines changing attitudes towards women with learning difficulties within the culture of normalisation. It builds on earlier critiques of the normalisation principle and, whilst welcoming these, argues the case for looking at women in particular. The authors review literature on sex education for people with learning difficulties to illustrate the ways in which gender has been ignored and women's sexuality has been treated. Writing from their perspective as lesbian feminists, they explore the oppressive nature of sex education in a culture that places a premium on normality. The paper ends with a discussion of alternative ways for women with learning difficulties to gain a sense of identity and belonging.
Zitzelsberger, H. (2005, June). (In)visibility: Accounts of embodiment of women with physical disabilities and differences.
Disability & Society, 20(4), 389-403.
This qualitative study explored relationships between contemporary Western cultural representations of bodies and the experiences of women born with physical disabilities and differences. In multiple, in-depth interviews, 14 women described the ways their embodiments are shaped by cultural discourses of disability, difference and gender. The findings indicated myriad ways in which the participating women experienced their embodied selves, paradoxically as both invisible and visible across sociomaterial places. Given the narrow range of normative appearances and capacities of ‘acceptable’ bodies, the women’s bodies were frequently seen as undesirable whereas their subjectivities and lives were rendered invisible. The women articulated accounts of imposed ways of being seen by others and how these views structured and delimited their agency and resistances. This article highlights the fluid and multiple ways embodiment is produced, seen and experienced, and the importance of taking into account the interplay of gender with experiences of physical disability and difference.