University of Baguio

Assumption Road, Baguio City 2600

Gender and Society

Topic: Gender and Disability

I. Objectives:

1. Examine the intersections of gender and disability as a general determinant of

discrimination.
2. Compare the manifestations of gender and disability as an interwoven phenomenon
in the public and private spheres.
3. Evaluate the conceptual applications of gender and disability in specific contexts.

The Gendered Experience of Disability

Disabled people have often been represented as without gender, as asexual creatures,
monstrous, the ‘Other’ to the social norm. In this way it may be assumed that for
disabled people gender has little bearing. Yet the image of disability may be intensified
by gender - for women a sense of intensified passivity and helplessness, for men a
corrupted masculinity generated by enforced dependence. Moreover, these images
have real consequences in terms of education, employment, living arrangements, and
personal relationships, victimization, and abuse that then in turn reinforce the images in
the public sphere. The gendered experience of disability reveals sustained patterns of
difference between men and women. For people with disabilities, gendering is
conditional (Gerschick 2000). Age of onset combined with the type of impairment leads
to gender expectations.

Disability

Disability is a physical or mental impairment, especially one that hinders or prevents a

person from performing tasks of daily living, carrying out work or household
responsibilities, or engaging in leisure and social activities.

Patterns of Gendered Studies of Disability

Public Pattern:

Impairment

While disabled people are much more likely to live in poverty, women are likely to be
poorer than men; especially in developing countries where women are often heads of
households. In 2020 survey, 15% of females have severe disability while 9% are for men.
49% of women have moderate disability and 45% are for men.

Educational Attainment

Even before the pandemic, gender inequalities in education already exist. Accessing to
education remains unequal because of persisting marginalization, disability
discrimination and poverty.

Discrimination in the Workplace

People with disabilities (PWD) are less likely to be paid in the workforce and in general
have lower incomes from employment.

Rehabilitation and Development

People with disabilities are less likely to have access to rehabilitation, and to
employment outcomes when they do receive rehabilitation.

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History of Disability

The type of impairment is different for women and men, with women more likely to
experience degenerative conditions, while men are more likely to experience injury-
related events.

Social Space

People with disabilities are more likely to experience public spaces as intimidating and
dangerous.

Private Pattern:

Dependence

Disabled women are more likely to be living on their own, or in their parental family than
men.

Marital Status

Disabled women are more likely to be divorced and less likely to marry than men with
disabilities.

Sexual Urges and Violence

People with disabilities are more likely to experience sexual violence in relationships and
in institutions. They experience more extreme social categorization, being more likely to
be seen either as hypersexual and uncontrollable, or desexualized and inert.

Gender has been widely used within the humanities and social sciences as both a
means to categorize differences, and as an analytical concept to explain differences.
In both the humanities and social sciences, feminist disability studies have emerged
partly because of attempts to explain gendered experience of disability and partly as a
challenge to contemporary feminist theory on gender.

The Social Lens of Gender and Disability

Sociological accounts of gender and disability stress the systemic nature of the social
order, and its reinforcement of powerful social institutions and their capacity to enact
and impose definitions and allocate resources. For disabilities the most central
institutions remain those associated with the medical profession, rehabilitation, and
social support. Many other institutions also reproduce patterns of gender discrimination
- such as education, employment, and transport. One of the most potent patterns of
discrimination is in the access to and use of public space.

The social relations of gender and the social relations of disability are now viewed as
much more complex and nuanced. The social model of disability has demonstrated
that wider power relations (e.g. class relations in capitalist societies) significantly affect
the pattern of disability disadvantage - making disability survival into a lottery critically
affected by the individual’s income and other material resources. Because the model
drew on political economy it emphasized political and economic processes that
generate disabling environments. These patterns together with conventional norms of
femininity have hindered the quest for independence for women with disabilities.
Women thus confront major obstacles not only in relation to overcoming disabling
environments, but also in achieving equal outcomes as men similarly disabled.
(Mekosha, 2004)

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