2008/03/01 by Marjo‐Riitta Reinikainen
Social Sciences · #Disability Rights and Representation #Discrimination and Equality Law #Feminism, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
paper · doi:10.1080/08038740701772790
crossref issued 2008/03/01 · crossref published 2008/03/01 · crossref published-print 2008/03/01 · openalex publication_date 2008/03/01 · crossref published-online 2008/03/25 · crossref created 2011/05/05 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · crossref deposited 2026/02/12 · crossref indexed 2026/07/29 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
In this article I examine twenty autobiographical texts, which include women's personal experiences of disability and womanhood, and are written by disabled women. Both the texts and the personal experiences are treated as social products which can, through their discourses, offer insight into the socio‐cultural practices and norms of disability and womanhood. Employing a Foucauldian discursive approach, the analysis of the texts focuses on references to the discourses and practices of disability and womanhood that can be disablistic, i.e. oppressive, exclusive, and disabling, to disabled women. I argue that more than by the impairment in itself, the experiences of disabled women are shaped by the social and cultural discourses and practices that define disability and womanhood as well as the normative roles, places, and contexts associated with them. The analysis covers issues such as practices of isolation, medical practices, and practices of motherhood, work, and caring. Simultaneous analysis of disability and womanhood exemplifies the way in which disablism operates in a complex interaction with the socio‐cultural discourses and practices of womanhood, thus producing gender‐differentiated disabling obstacles for disabled women. Some of the traditional normative ideas of disability and womanhood appear as mutually exclusive opposites in the experiences of disabled women. In addition to the need to become aware of the disablistic practices of disability in disabled women's life, I suggest that disability, as a socio‐culturally meaningful difference, could function as a significant analytical dimension of feminist research and analysis in identifying disabling and oppressive features in the normative and hegemonic discourses on womanhood and femininity, and in resisting and deconstructing these features in the future.