Womens Studies International Forum, Vol. 21, No. 4, pp.

429439, 1998 Copyright 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in the USA. All rights reserved 0277-5395/98 $19.00 .00

PII S0277-5395(98)00038-7

WOMEN WITH DISABILITIES: MISSING VOICES

Beth A. Ferri
Texas Womans University, College of Education and Human Ecology, Department of Early Childhood and Special Education, Denton, TX 76204, USA

l Gregg Noe
University of Georgia, College of Education, Department of Special Education, Athens, GA 30602, USA

Synopsis This paper analyses how disability informs and complicates gender identity for women with disabilities and demonstrates that disability is a feminist issue. The rst 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 reects 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 womens bodies, newborns 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. 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd

Gender and disability are both social constructions, understandable only within the contexts and relationships that give meaning to the terms (Asch & Fine, 1992). Inherent in the constructions of both disability and gender are social and historical contexts and the political values, interests, and assumptions of the dominant culture (Harris & Wideman, 1988). As Asch and Fine (1988) note, the attitudes and structural barriers of the nondisabled turn disabilities into handicaps. Understanding disability as a social construction disrupts decit models of disability, which locate disabilities within the individual rather than within the institutions or structures of society. Shakespeare (1995) suggests that through their emergent voices, individuals with disabilities are creating ourselves for ourselves, rather than relying on the traditional narratives of biomedical intervention or rehabilitation (p. 2). The purposes of this paper will be to analyze how gender is informed and complicated by disability, to propose how the voices of women with disabilities would illuminate current feminist debates, and to explore various strategies borrowed from feminism and else-

where that might prove emancipatory for women with disabilities. First, however, will be an analysis of the marginalized status of women with disabilities in the United States. Please note that although the paper draws on writings from an international group of scholars, including the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States, current research on the status of women with disabilities is situated within the United States (US) unless otherwise stated. The status of women with disabilities underscores their dual silence and oppression. The dual silence of women with disabilities is evidenced by a lack of a disability perspective in feminist theory and practice, and a failure of the disability rights movement to analyze how gender impacts disability (Blackwell-Stratton, Breslin, Mayerson, & Bailey, 1988). The absence of voices of women with disabilities results in an ableist womens movement and a sexist disability movement. The dual oppression of women with disabilities can be traced to early school experiences, vocational, rehabilitation, and employment statistics. Findings suggest that gender and disability interact in ways that place women

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with disabilities at risk both nancially and socially. Barbara Noble (as cited in Gray, 1993) points out that while the media gives a lot of attention to the glass ceiling in relation to women being systematically kept out of executive and high-level positions, this issue does not represent the more relevant problem for most women, especially women with disabilities, which is the sticky oor of low-wage and part-time occupations. Disparities are also present in the educational experiences of women and girls with disabilities. Studies show that two thirds of all US students served by special education programs are male (US Department of Education, Ofce of Civil Rights, 1988). The most recent ndings report that the only category of special education in which more females are identied and serviced is the category of mental retardation (Wagner, 1992). Interestingly, this category is also disproportionately represented by minority students (US Department of Education, Ofce of Civil Rights, 1988). More males are identied as having learning disabilitiesthe largest category of services for special education studentseven though medical reports indicate no sex differences in the occurrence of learning disabilities (American Association of University Women Educational Foundation, 1992). Vogel (1990) also notes that females who are identied as learning disabled by school personnel tend to have lower IQ scores than males who are referred for these classes, and suggests that many females are not receiving needed educational intervention. This nding along with the fact that females identied for special education services are more likely to also be from racial or ethnic minorities suggests that more females with disabilities are at risk for poor postsecondary transition outcomes than their male counterparts (Wagner, 1992). Vocational programs, rehabilitation services, and other postsecondary options for women with disabilities continue the pattern seen in school-aged populations, and serve as a precursor for later disparities in the work force. Statistics on vocational programs show that women with disabilities are less likely to be exposed to occupation-specic vocational training (Wagner, 1992). Rehabilitation programs are also more likely to consider a womans case to be successfully terminated with the outcome of

homemaker, even if the woman was initially seeking a paid vocational outcome (Danek, 1992). As a result, woman with disabilities are less likely to be employed outside the home after completing vocational or rehabilitation programs. Danek (1992) notes that the impact of a lack of paid employment for women with disabilities is magnied because governmental programs such as Social Security and Disability Insurance do not recognize womens unpaid labor, and because women with disabilities often need to have access to healthcare and services necessary for independent living. Wagners (1992) report conrms that more women with disabilities live below the poverty line, are singleparenting, and are less likely to have social outlets than males with disabilities. Unfortunately, the status of women with disabilities is often one of poverty, isolation, and lack of social supports. It would seem that disability or gender alone cannot account for the status of women with disabilities. Women with disabilities fare much worse than either nondisabled women or men with disabilities (Kraus & Stoddard, 1991; Wagner, 1992). Factors such as race and class also seem to braid with disability and gender in ways that magnify the oppressions that these women face. It would be too simplistic to consider women with disabilities as simply facing a double handicap without interrogating how other factors simultaneously impact these womens lives. However, it may be useful to analyze ways that disability impacts and gives meaning to gender. In this way, disability would be seen as a source of diversity among women, along with differences in race, class, and sexual orientation, and so forth. The voices of women with disabilities offer unique perspectives to issues confronting women regarding what it means to be gendered female in an ableist and sexist society.

GENDER AS INFORMED BY DISABILITY Central to thinking about gender as a social construction is acknowledging that differing social situations affect gender identity and sex roles in different ways. What is considered appropriate gender identity must therefore be interpreted within a particular context. The focus of this

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section is to explore how gender construction and issues of sexuality are inuenced by the presence of a disability for women and girls. Harris and Wideman (1988), in exploring ways that disability affects gender identity, report that women with disabilities are less sexrole stereotyped than nondisabled women. One explanation they provide is that women with disabilities are excluded from what society rigidly includes in the sex-gender system. Harris and Wideman (1988) draw on French psychoanalytic tradition and suggest that women with disabilities, although subjected to the laws of patriarchy, are nonetheless excluded from its representations and symbolic order. Their explanation suggests that women with disabilities are not necessarily freed from the sexgender system, but instead are denied access to it (Harris & Wideman, 1988). In their analysis, women with disabilities are in actuality facing a double invisibilityoccupying neither the position of object nor subject of desire. The perceived difference between women without disabilities being seen as sex objects, while women with disabilities are seen as asexual, has contributed to misunderstandings and even mistrust between women with disabilities and nondisabled feminists (Deegan, 1985). Asch and Fine (1988, 1992) recall a tension that emerged regarding a keynote speech given by a well-known feminist speaker and a leading disability rights activist on the issue of sexual harassment, which was presented as an issue that affects all women. Judy Heumann said, You know, I use a wheelchair, and when I go down the street I do not get to be sexually harassed. I hear nondisabled women complaining about it, but I dont ever get treated as a sexual object (in Fine & Asch, 1988, p. 29). Women with disabilities may not perceive what are considered by feminists to be repressive attitudes if these attitudes represent denied roles because of ableist attitudes and perceived asexuality. This lack of a shared understanding creates tension rather than coalition among women with and without disabilities. Fine and Asch (1988) report that our culture views being female and disabled as redundant, whereas being male and disabled is viewed as a contradiction (p. 23). They are referring to the notion that both femininity and people with disabilities are associated with dependency. They also contend that gender, more

so than type or severity of disability, has a greater negative impact on the perceptions of others. Recognizing agency in a way that Harris and Wideman (1988) do not, Fine and Asch (1988) suggest that women with disabilities may forsake their gender role [to] escape from disability-imposed dependence (p. 24). This would suggest that women with disabilities are less sex-role stereotyped as a form of resistance to oppressive dual dependency images imposed by society. A narrative from a woman with a disability, quoted in Lisi (1993), suggests that because women with disabilities do not t into the stereotype they are able to be more of who they really are as women (p. 204). Whether or not women with disabilities choose to embrace or reject traditional sex roles that exclude them, what is clear from these writings is that gender is complicated by disability. Additionally, in negotiating the multiple positions of gender and disability, women with disabilities must forge a gender identity since one will not necessarily be imposed. What is important for feminists to consider is that any analysis of the construction of gender must recognize that disabilities can complicate the process. Further dialogue between women with and without disabilities might provide a context for the analysis of how women who are considered outside of the sex-gender system negotiate their gender identity. The issue of asexuality is closely connected with gender identity. Blackwell-Stratton and colleagues (1988), in describing the construction of gender and sexuality as inuenced by the presence of a disability, parallel the image of the beauty queen with the image of the poster child. They note that both images are exploitative, oppressive, and perpetuate false stereotypes about women. The beauty queen image portrays nondisabled women exclusively by their sexuality, while the eternal posterchild1 image categorizes women with disabilities as absent of sexuality. Weinberg (1988) nds that women with disabilities are often locked in a perpetual adolescence because of the strong societal taboos attached to their sexuality (p. 274). BlackwellStratton and colleagues (1988) describe women with disabilities as eternal poster children, cute, but not sexy; always the cared for, never the caring (p. 307). This sexuality taboo is often linked to the irrational fear that women with disabilities will give birth to defective off-

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spring and will be unt mothers (Heyman & Huckle, 1995). This fear has led to protective regulation to control the bodies, the reproductive capacities, and the social opportunities of women with disabilities. These measures have included forced sterilization, abortion, and denial of custody to women with disabilities (Weinberg, 1988). Disturbingly, while sterilization and denial of information has been seen as a way to protect women with disabilities from sexual abuse and exploitation, Asch and Fine (1988) warn that forced sterilization may actually hide, rather than prevent these abuses. Again, it would be of interest to examine how women with disabilities construct a sexual identity within a context so invested in denying them access to sexual expression. However, as Gibson (1993) states, Im not sure if society is ready to see people with disabilities as sexual beings (p. 15). In exploring gender identity and a disability consciousness, young women with disabilities have very few positive models made available to them. Meyerson (1990) notes that although individuals with disabilities are the largest minority group in the United States, they are denied a sense of shared identity because most are raised among nondisabled people in their families and communities. For this reason, the representations in lm, media, and literature may take on an increased importance. Kent (1988) describes how women with disabilities look to literature and lm in search of a sense of self, an identity, and a heroine. With few exceptions, the representations of women with disabilities in these portrayals only perpetuate negative, distorted, and stereotypical images. The few images depicted in literature, lm, photography, and even in the Bible, use disability as a metaphor for broader themes, like death, tragedy, struggle, and vulnerability (Hevey, 1992; Kent, 1988; Longmore, 1987; Odell, 1993). The woman with a disability is rarely the heroine and most often the victim, with no opportunity for social relationships, except in her fantasies (Kent, 1988). Hevey (1992) is especially critical of the photographic images of charity photography as oppressive and damaging. The rare positive representation treats disability as the central dening characteristic that must be either bravely overcome by the character, or accepted with the help of othersmost often the nondisabled (Kent, 1987; Zola, 1982).

Biklen (1987) reports that print media is replete with patronizing portrayals of the person with a disability achieving against the odds. The portrayals depoliticize the disability rights movement and romanticize disability at the expense of individuals who cannot meet these expectations (Shakespeare, 1994). For young females searching for a sense of identity in these images, the picture is discouraging. As Kent (1987) notes, there arent many of these characters I would like to get to know in real life; there are even fewer I would ever want to become (p. 62). She suggests that young women, who look to these images for some barometer of how they are perceived by others, have their most deep-seated fears conrmed and run the risk of internalizing these oppressive attitudes. It seems that to be gendered female with a disability is to either be denied a gender identity, or to have that identity rendered invisible as a result of stereotypical attitudes. To what extent do these images reect or perpetuate current attitudes about disability and femaleness? It is an obvious, but painful fact that having a disability reduces social opportunities for women with disabilities (Fisher & Galler, 1988). It is important for women with disabilities to have the opportunity to replace and challenge oppressive representations in literature and also in society. It remains to be examined how diverse groups of women with disabilities construct gender identities under multiple inviabilities or how different disabilities impact this construction differently. In their claim to represent women, feminists must examine, in addition to race, class, and sexual orientation, ways that disability interacts with gender and these other oppressions. While the emerging scholarship by and about women with disabilities is beginning to ll in some of these gaps, there is quite simply a long way to go. This task will be complex as there is no one disability experience, and because disability always occurs within a larger social context that complicates how the disability is experienced. Scholars invested in improving the lives of women of color and poor women must also recognize the ways that disability impacts these women in disproportionate ways. The next section of this paper suggests points of entry into feminist thought that would be illuminated or broadened by attending to voices of women with disabilities. While an in-depth analysis of these parallels is beyond the scope of this paper, these par-

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allels are meant as a means to begin a discussion within the feminist community of how disability perspectives might be included within feminist thought.

PARALLELS TO FEMINIST THOUGHT The following parallels have been raised by writers attempting to nd some common ground between feminist discourse and a disability rights perspective. These parallels are in no means exhaustive of the connections that a critical dialogue between women with and without disabilities might be able to illuminate. The sex object and the sex absent The earlier parallel between the beauty queen and the poster child is useful in highlighting the differences in the sexual representations of women as impacted by disability. Asch and Fine (1992) draw on the work of French feminists, such as Irigaray (1985), who speak of the need for women to create a language that is not marked by the phallus and patriarchy as a way of reclaiming feminine desire. The sex object image of the beauty queen places women as the object of desirethe other in the language of sexuality. Both heterosexual and lesbian women with disabilities speak of having limited options for interpersonal relationships. It seems that women with disabilities are under a double silence, treated as asexual and then denied any image (even an oppressive one) of their sexuality. Asch and Fine (1992) claim that women with disabilities in breaking this silence have the potential to provide a perspective that broadens and expands our images of sexuality from a monolithic preoccupation with the phallus, to an expression of eroticism and desire that extends boundaries in relation to the body. As poet Cheryl Marie Wade (1995) says of herself, Im a French kiss with cleft tongue . . . Im the woman with juice (p. 30). Control of womens bodies Related to the representation of the body and images of sexuality is one of feminisms central concernsthe control, abuse, and exploitation of womens bodies. Wendel (1993) suggests that ambivalent feelings regarding the body have led to privileging a rational and abstract

mind over body. While some feminists have tended to re-envision the body and even celebrate it, Wendel (1993) notes that in doing so feminists are envisioning an idealized, abled body rather than a disabled one. Women with disabilities, who, like all women, have been subjected to oppression justied by embodying the biology of other, recognize that the body and mind are not separate, but intimately connected. The view of a celebrated body presents a challenge for feminists with physical disabilities, for instance, who might see transcendence of the body as a positive adaptation to oppressive images of disability by an ableist society, or a way of dealing with the reality of pain associated with certain disabilities or illnesses. Likewise, Littman (1993), in a powerful essay about her experiences with dyslexia and sexual abuse, draws intimate connections between mind and body, and how for her, they are interconnected. She says, both experiences taught me not to trust my perceptions; both left me with a feeling that I was out of control and now reclaiming my right to authorship is deeply connected to reclaiming my body (p. 45). While women with disabilities have been denied sexual identity, they have not been exempt from sexual abuse, victimization, and exploitative relationships. Findings show that although the incidence is difcult to accurately determine, women with disabilities are at an increased risk for sexual assault and abuse (Watson-Armstrong, ORourke, & Schatzlein, 1994). Fine and Asch (1988) also raise a disturbing question of whether forced sterilization serves to conceal incidences of rape and abuse of women and girls with disabilities by caretakers and personal care attendants. They warn that a female with a disability is often an easy victim of abuse by male relatives, personal care attendants, and male partners on whom they may be dependent for nancial security or personal care. Fine and Asch (1988) suggest that in addition to the repressive stereotypes of the woman with disability as being an unt lover, she is also assumed to be an unt mother. Further, rather than reducing reproductive freedom to abortion rights, women with disabilities must also ght a history of forced sterilization and denial of custody and adoption rights. Some states have gone as far as prohibiting women with histories of mental retardation, epilepsy, and psychiatric disorders from marrying. Additionally, women

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with physical disabilities often have difculty nding midwives or obstetricians to deliver their children because these births are considered high risk (Childbirth Support for Women with Disabilities, 1993). Ultimately, the fear behind this control of reproductive rights is the irrational fear that women with disabilities will produce defective children and will be unt mothers. Unfortunately, reproductive rights of nondisabled women have been seen as in opposition to the right to personhood and treatment of newborns with disabilities (Fine & Asch, 1988). Gartner and Joe (1987) claim that liberals and feminists alike have been reluctant to support the right to treatment for newborns with disabilities. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has consistently seen this issue in terms of parents right to privacy. The fact that abortion rights activists and families denying treatment to newborns with disabilities have used the same defense of privacy has created tensions between feminists and disability rights advocates. Support of right to treatment of newborns with disabilities has come from right wing, anti-abortion conservatives furthering this confusion. One way out of this tangle between disability rights activists and feminists, suggested by Fine and Asch (1988), is for both groups to support the reproductive rights of all women, but to draw a clear line of separation between the fetus and the newborn. This line of birth is important in this debate since once a child is born a parent can choose not to parent a child but cannot eliminate it because it does not meet [his or] her physical and mental specications (Fine & Asch, 1988, p. 302). Thus, a better way to envision these issues would be to link denial of treatment to femicideboth involving the elimination of infants, because they do not meet some physical or mental specication. Both practices place qualications on personhood. With this understanding, the control of womens bodies and reproductive freedom would not be in opposition to the right to treatment for newborns with disabilities. Finally, the issue of choice regarding abortion and disability must recognize that a viable choice requires adequate social supports and reliable information (Poovey, 1992). Although Poovey makes the connection to class rather than disability, her argument is applicable since women carrying fetuses with known disabilities often lack access to adequate medical and child

care, and receive biased information about disabilities. Pooveys requirement of linking choice to social supports and resources would contend that this absence of necessary social supports and reliable information results in an absence of choice for women. Reverse mirrors Another parallel related to womens bodies involves the exaggeration of difference. Irigarays (1985) idea of a phallic feminine or the woman as man sees her, suggests ways that gender difference in a patriarchy must be exaggerated to reinforce the stereotypic images of woman as other. Blackwell-Stratton and colleagues (1988) use the image of a cracked mirror as a metaphor for how our images of women with disabilities are distorted. We feel that a more accurate metaphor would be a reverse mirror that either diminishes or exaggerates the image behind its gaze. This would illuminate the ways, for example, that differences in physical size and power between females and males in Western culture are exaggerated by clothing, makeup, and so forth. In similar ways, abled people perpetuate myths about people with disabilities as being overly dependent, powerless, and tragic victims. Further, as Shakespeare (1995) notes, the maintenance of a nondisabled identity requires a denial of physicality, while individuals with physical disabilities come to be dened entirely by their physicality. These exaggerated stereotypes serve to make the nondisabled feel less vulnerable and more abled, just as exaggerations between women and men serve to make men feel and appear more powerful. By uncovering the fear behind exaggerating difference we may begin to acknowledge practices that perpetuate and justify the domination of others. This metaphor might enable us to examine ways that difference between groups require constant exaggeration of difference, and to interrogate what is behind our need to see difference in exaggerated ways. Passing and the myth of normal A nal parallel or connection between feminist thought and women with disabilities is related to the issue of passing. The practices of passing might be compared to liberal feminist strategies of working toward individual change, compared to strategies that are more

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structural in their approach. An example of passing is the practice of lessening the stigmatizing facial features of children or adults with Down syndrome through corrective surgery. Likewise, parents, teachers, and rehabilitation counselors encourage children and adults with disabilities to pass for as normal as possiblereferring to this goal as normalization (Thomson, 1997, p. 301). It is embedded in the American ethos, and in the few images of people with disabilities in literature and lm, which champion the person who overcomes their disability and achieves success. These examples demonstrate how individuals are encouraged to change themselves to gain access to society, rather than calling into question their exclusion in the rst place. Individuals who choose not to pass may face negative attitudes by others. For instance, Audre Lorde (1980) was told by a nurse that she was hurting morale by not wearing a prosthesis after breast cancer surgery. Lorde (1994, 1980) traces the path of prosthesis as one of silence and invisibility. She recounts the pressures of conformity and the loneliness of difference, which encourage women to pass (Lorde, 1994, p. 275). Writings by women with disabilities are full of examples of women like Harilyn Rousso, who suggests that efforts made to change her walk felt like a personal assault and an incomplete acceptance of all of me, an attempt to make me over (Fine & Asch, 1988, p. 25). The issue of passing is particularly relevant to women with hidden disabilities, like learning disabilities, who may face additional pressure to pass. Behind passing lies the implicit assumption that to be abled is normal, rather than calling into question the unsteady construction of normal. The well-known speech by Sojourner Truth rst given in 1851, Aint I a Woman, has been used by black feminists to deconstruct the narrowly dened white image of femininity (in Collins, 1991). In the speech, Truth gives specic examples of how her self-denition of womanhood includes emotional and physical strength, independence, and political and personal efcacyall characteristics that were antithetical to white notions of womanhood. A similar deconstruction would work for women with disabilities who have been excluded from an exclusionary and narrow construction of femininity. The previous parallels to feminist thought are

examples of potential points of entry or bridges for women with disabilities in their struggle to counteract multiple oppressions and inviabilities. However, just as a disability perspective has been missing from feminist writings, much of the work within the eld of disabilities ignores the impact of gender. More current thinking about disability has been inuenced by some of the gains made in the womens movement and civil rights struggles, and most recently by constructivist and postmodern thought. It will be necessary for women with disabilities to analyze the various strategies and standpoints that have been useful to other oppressed groups to explore theories and standpoints that might prove to be emancipatory. Additionally, nondisabled teachers, activists, and researchers acting as allies must envision disability as an analytic category and address ableism in all their emancipatory efforts. The nal section of this paper will highlight some of these strategies in terms of their emancipatory potential for women with disabilities.

STRATEGIES FOR CHANGE In 1991, the Institute of Medicine recognized that 35 million people in the US were disabled. The Americans with Disabilities Act (1990), which recognizes disability in a broader sense and includes HIV and AIDS, determined that there were 43 million Americans with disabilities. We report these statistics for several reasons: (a) since disability is a social construct, denitions have a large impact on disability and disability services; (b) disability is generally considered an either/or, static category that can be counted and measured, rather than a uid, shifting, and continuous process (Zola, 1993a); (c) statistics about disability often ignores gender; and (d) even at the lowest estimates, people with disabilities represent the largest minority group in the United States. Minority status has been useful for disability rights activists seeking equality in employment, education, etc., and as a political standpoint. Much of the legal gains, such as the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, are testimony to the success of these struggles. These gains can be paralleled to gains within the womens movement and other groups efforts toward civil rights. However, as Gartner and Joe (1987) suggest,

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While the disability rights movement has been extraordinarily successful in the short span of less than a quarter of a century in both challenging disabling images and enlisting government support of equal rights for persons with disabilities, the image of disability reected in at least some of these victories is contradictory, even regressive. (p. 4) They warn that preferential treatment conveys to the public that people with disabilities are in need of charity and should qualify for victim status. While statistics certainly support that women with disabilities are an oppressed group, a standpoint or minority status position reduces women with disabilities to a singular, identiable group masking the intersections of class, race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation. Zola (1993a) contends that the very act of counting the prevalence of disability requires dichotomous, either/or thinking, and is politically motivated. Finkelsteins (1980) denitions of disability imply a failure to meet socially created and imposed abled standards. It follows that women with disabilities cannot achieve complete equality when doing so requires conforming to the norms of the society that created the disability in the rst place. Zola (1993b) suggests that a minority group approach may actually be disadvantageous because it allows the perception that the adaptations required by individuals with disabilities are special and restrictive rather than universal. Finally, standpoint theories fail to displace the positioning of abled as the norm or center of analysis. Marginality requires a dominant center, therefore, alternative ways of thinking that call into question the category of normal or abled might be more useful to disrupt the category of disability. This strategy would view disability as a sociopolitical constructnot as a category inherent in individuals, but rather within the structures of an ableist society. The history of the eld of disabilities is rooted in a functional limitations model that focuses on the decitpresumed to be located within the individual. A second wave in the disability movement focused on obtaining rights for individuals with disabilities from a minority group or standpoint model. Both of these models are currently being challenged by models that recognize disability as a social construction. A revolutionary shift in thinking about disability recognizes disability as located in the environment and in barriers created by an ableist society

(Gartner & Joe, 1987). Gartner and Joe (1987) note that it is political decisions rather than individual impairments that prevent the creation of structures and environments that meet the needs of people with a wide range of functional capabilities. Their concept of the disabled environment includes both the physical and the attitudinal obstacles to full participation in society (p. 187). According to Finkelstein (1980), redening disability will require turning normal upside down and recognizing that if society were structured for people in wheelchairs, for example, able-bodied people would be disabled by structures and environments systematically designed not to meet their needs. A recent conceptualization of the social model of disability calls for an acknowledgement that people with impairments are disabled, not just by material and physical discrimination, but also by prejudice. This prejudice is not just interpersonal, it is also implicit in cultural representations in language, and in socialization (Shakespeare, 1994, p. 296). The consequence of these models on research and practice are many. If disability and gender are recognized as social constructions then the social meaning of disability is critical to our understanding. Asch and Fine (1992) criticize much of the psychological and functional approaches to the study of disability and refer to them as theory as weapon. They suggest that what is missing in these reductionistic approaches is an analysis of the lived experiences of women with disabilities and their varied, complex, and conicting realities. Instead, a materialist perspective of disability recognizes disability as imposed on top of impairment as a form of social oppression (Finkelstein, 1980). Particularly important to this thinking is an elaboration of disability as it impacts identity from the vantage point of women with disabilities. Additionally, the forms of resistance to and internalization of those experiences become critical, since women with disabilities are multiply situated and subjected to multiple and often contradictory constructions. Another critical aspect of research and practice involving individuals with disabilities is for researchers and service providers to take a more critical stance in their participation in the disability relationship (Finkelstein, 1980). Even when the typical positioning of the decit originating within the individual is critiqued, the assumption that the solution is located within the profession rather than with the person with a

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disability is often left unexamined. Unfortunately, growth in the eld of disabilities requires a subject who then becomes the passive object of analysis or intervention.2 Stubbins (in Finkelstein, 1980) suggests that new models for training service providers should focus on the environment, not the individual, as the object of remediation, and should reject the dualistic separation between providers and consumers of services. A shift in focus would examine the nondisabled and their behavior and attitudes toward individuals with disabilities and disabling structures as social problems to overcome (Morris, 1992). None of these scholars are suggesting that we get rid of either the professions or the professionals studying or servicing individuals with disabilities. Rather, they suggest a shift in focus in order to challenge the oppressive structures inherent in current models that locate the decit rather than the solution with the individual with a disability. In fact, Morris (1992) suggests that the nondisabled are potential allies in the creation of emancipatory research. In this model, individuals with disabilities take control of the representation of disability and in the production and dissemination of knowledge, and the nondisabled adopt a self-critical stance regarding their attitudes and role in the process. Asch and Fine (1992) note that there is nothing essentially true about the classication systems that we use to dene normal and other. The deconstructionist transcendence of categories would ultimately destabilize the standpoint of disability as a liberation movement, but would at the same time reveal that the construction of normal and truth are inherently unstable and politically motivated. As Shakespeare (1995) notes, perhaps a more useful analysis would involve interrogating the maintenance of a nondisabled identity . . . rather than interrogating the other, let us deconstruct the normalitywhich-is-to-be-assumed (p. 3). An interrogation of the exclusivity of the nondisabled identity would certainly shift the object of analysis as well as the focus of remediation from the disabled to the abled, and may prove emancipatory for individuals who have been dened by their difference from the norm. This strategy would also help circumvent the trap that befalls many oppressed groupsthat of dening oneself in reaction to the oppressors denition (Wade, 1994). Another emancipatory strategy borrowed from feminist and other oppressed groups in-

volves turning language back on itself, reclaiming stigmatized words, and subverting and revaluing them. Cheryl Marie Wade (1994) notes that what is missing in the political standpoint strategies is a true esteeming of the cripple body (p. 35) and the embracing of the aesthetic of disability. Nancy Mairs (in Zola, 1993b) in explaining the complex reasons why she chooses the word cripple among the other labels of disability says that she wants people to see her as a tough and that As a cripple, I swagger (p. 18). The issue at hand is the need for oppressed groups to take control of the terms of representation (Corbett, 1994). The question as we see it is this: how to obtain political and liberatory gains for women with disabilities as an oppressed group, while at the same time challenging oppressive classications and the myth of normal? Feminists have explored these same issues. Researchers must continue to explore ways that silenced groups can claim a central rather than marginal position in the production of knowledge, while at the same time calling into question the very categories of margin and center. The multiple tasks of challenging ableism, along with issues of racism, sexism, classism, and heterosexism will require a consideration of how the aspects of womens realities, including the experience of disability, interact in diverse ways. Activists, scholars, and teachers will need to analyze disability and ableism as social and political issues, rather than individual or personal issues (Linton, Mello, & ONeill, 1995).3 I hope to have demonstrated that disability is a feminist issue and that gender is a disability issue. Bell hooks (1994) cautions, however, that simply talking about diversity is not enough. She says that without the kind of collective, reciprocal dialogic exchange required for coalition work, we will fall short of the goal of transgressing boundaries and transforming consciousness. The importance of seeking out and engaging in dialogue with women with disabilities is essential to this goal. We begin by breaking the silence and creating spaces for dialogue.

ENDNOTES
1. The term posterchild refers to the practice of many disability-related charity organizations of using a child with a particular disability for charity photographs and media campaigns. These photos are exploitive, designed to evoke pity in the nondisabled, and thus, a desire to contribute money to the charity.

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2. For several informative essays about therapeutic issues for women with disabilities as both clients and clinicians, see Willmuth and Holcomb (1993). 3. For a discussion of how to incorporate disability into several curricular areas or as a part of a diversity requirement at the university level see a special issue of Radical Teacher on disability studies (1995:47).

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