WOMEN PROFESSIONALS
Highlighted here are articles that contain perspectives of women with disabilities as professionals and teachers as well as historical contributions by women to disability-related fields and one article on the role of gender on job stress for special education teachers.
Brown, A. (2005, September). Ellen Pinsent: Including the 'feebleminded' in Birmingham, 1900-1913. History of Education, 34(5), 535-546.
This paper addresses the theme of 'insiders and outsiders in the history of education' in two ways. First, it is an exploration of the journey of one woman from being an educational outsider to her influential position on the inside as a local and national educational policymaker. Ellen Pinsent's life is illustrative of the transition of middle class women from a private to a public sphere, from lady philanthropist to professional policymaker. Second, it examines her influence on policy decisions in the emerging field of special education in the period 1900-1913.
Brueggemann, B. J., Garland-Thomson, R., & Kleege, G. (2005, Spring). What her body taught (or, teaching about and with a disability): A conversation. Feminist Studies, 31(1), 13-33.
Brueggemann, Garland-Thompson, and Kleege focus on their challenges and strategies as feminist scholars and teachers with disabilities in the classroom. Key to their discussion is the function of different structures--pedagogical and institutional--that both enable and deter their efforts. In the classroom, students forgetting about their disabilities or normalizing them seems to erase the productive tension through difference that their presence introduces. Their goal is not to erase disability, but rather to reconfigure students' understandings of disability as not having a master status--to change the way disability matters to the students.
Carlson, L. (2001). Cognitive ableism and Disability Studies: Feminist reflections on the history of mental retardation. In E. Kittay, S. Silvers, & S. Wendell (Eds.), Special issue: Feminism and disability. Hypatia, 16(4), 124-146.
This paper examines five groups of women that were instrumental in the emergence of the category of "feeblemindedness" in the United States. It analyzes the dynamics of oppression and power relations in the following five groups of women: "feebleminded" women, institutional caregivers, mothers, researchers, and reformists. Ultimately, I argue that a feminist analysis of the history of mental retardation is necessary to serve as a guide for future feminist work on cognitive disability.
Carpenter, P. K. (2000). The Bath Idiot and Imbecile Institution. History of Psychiatry, 11(2), 163-188.
The Bath Institution for Idiot Children and those of Weak Intellect was founded in 1846 by Miss Charlotte White, and opened in April 1846 in two rooms with a resident matron and three pupils. It was unique amongst the Idiot Asylums in being managed by women. In time it became similar to any small private idiot home but the Commissioners in Lunacy forced its reform, without registering it as an idiot asylum. It was taken over by the Bath Municipal Charity Trustees. It eventually became an endowed school, licensed by the Board of Control. This paper describes its history and its eventual control by the Lunacy Commission.
Dutta, A., Schiro-Geist, C., Kundu, M. M., & Broadbent, E. D. (2001). Women professionals in rehabilitation: Status of women professionals in rehabilitation education. The Rehabilitation Professional, 9(4), 37-41.
Presents an overview of the role of women as rehabilitation educators and provides suggestions for promoting women educators in the rehabilitation education workplace.
Eichinger, J. (2000, December). Job stress and satisfaction among special education teachers: Effects of gender and social role orientation. International Journal of Disability, Development and Education, 47(4), 397-412.
Eighty-nine female and 43 male special education teachers completed a battery of instruments dealing with job stress and satisfaction and social role characteristics. Social role orientation (expressive, instrumental, balanced, and undifferentiated) was determined for each of the teachers both on- and off-the-job using the Bem Sex Role Inventory, and then analysed in relation to six indices of work-related stress and satisfaction. For female special educators, a balanced social role orientation was associated with higher levels of satisfaction and lower levels of stress, while an undifferentiated orientation was associated with lower levels of satisfaction and higher levels of stress. Implications for teacher preparation programs are discussed, and suggestions for future research are included.
Shuttleworth, R. P., & Kasnitz, D. (2004, June). Stigma, community, ethnography: Joan Ablon's contribution to the anthropology of impairment-disability. Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 18(2), 139-161.
Joan Ablon has helped establish the anthropology of impairment-disability and significantly contributed to the role of anthropology in disability studies. In this article, we review the development of and situate Ablon's ethnographic research in the anthropology of impairment-disability. We then address various methodological issues in her work including her ethnographic approach, her grounding in action anthropology and her support for the development of the academic study of disability in anthropology and the careers of disabled anthropologists. The next section of the article examines Ablon's use of the notion of stigma, her understanding of community, and her engagement with disability rights. As examples of themes important to disability studies, we present her discussion of the implications of the ideal of the body beautiful, and gender differences in negotiating intimacy for people with physical differences. We close with a discussion of the future of an anthropology of impairment-disability.
Stevens, A. R. A. (2000, June). Women superintendents: The contribution of Margaret MacDowall and other women managers of mental deficiency institutions in England. British Journal of Learning Disabilities, 28(2), 71-77.
The present paper explores gender differences in the management of mental deficiency institutions. It suggests that women played a particularly significant part in the management of some of the earliest institutions, and had a significant influence from the nineteenth century until well into the twentieth century. In addition, this study addresses the particular contribution of Miss S. Margaret MacDowall (1862–1930). Miss MacDowall's work demonstrates that teaching regimes and conditions in some types of smaller institutions run by women compare favourably to larger institutions run by men. The present paper further suggests that small institutions run by women during the Mental Deficiency Acts are worthy of more detailed study because these provide a continuity between nineteenth-century pedagogic traditions and modern forms of community-based residential care, and can offer useful ideas for developing residential care in the future.
van Drenth, A. (2003, December). "Tender sympathy and scrupulous fidelity": Gender and professionalism in the history of deaf education in the United States. International Journal of Disability, Development and Education, 50(4), 367-383.
This article examines the gendered professionalism that developed in the education of deaf persons in the second half of the 19th Century in the United States. It shows how the rise of professionalism involved the social construction of gender. During the 19th Century many women entered the teaching profession and many taught deaf persons. Employing them was considered attractive, not only because of the low wages that the women were paid, but also because of the "tender sympathy and scrupulous fidelity" that these women teachers showed in their professional practice. The introduction of the oral method in the education of deaf individuals favoured women teachers who were valued for their capacities to relate to pupils and whose labour was cheap compared to men. In due course women teachers succeeded in developing specific expertise and thereby influenced the professional community. Eventually their gendered professionalism became crucial in settling the schism between manualism and oralism, a schism that marked the history of the education of deaf individuals at the turn of the 19th Century in the United States.
Wiener, D. (2005). “Normals, crazies, insiders, and outsiders”: The relevance of Sue Estroff’s Medical Anthropology to Disability Studies. Review of Disability Studies, 1(3), 76-82.
This essay explores the promising interdisciplinary connections between Disability Studies and Medical Anthropology by examining the work of long-time ethnographer and activist Sue Estroff in the context of a Disability Studies perspective and philosophy. The author provides an array of examples of how Estroff ’s historical, and more recent scholarship, is relevant to Disability Studies praxis today, and suggests that Medical Anthropology as a field would benefit from utilizing a Disability Studies orientation in its own scholarship and practices.