Individual-systemic violence: disabled women's standpoint.

Abstract

This article presents an insider reflection on questions of violence and women with disabilities. We explore reasons for the systemic omission of women with disabilities from mainstream research and from services addressing non-disabled women's experiences. Several questions are postulated. Has segregation of women with disabilities from the mainstream rendered a large part of their experiences, including the experience of violence, invisible? Have misconceptions about the lives of women with disabilities contributed to exclusionary practices within the women's movement?

This article further submits that violence against women with disabilities assumes many forms, both individual and systemic. It explores several factors, among these how exclusion of disabled women from mainstream services, coupled with the lack of appropriate funding for their organisations, and the poverty lived by individual women with disabilities; renders more difficult the task of these organisations to respond to member needs. The inaction that allows the cycle of poverty and violence to continue in the individual and collective lives of women with disabilities furthers institutional, system-based violence.

Key words: Women with disabilities, systemic and individual violence.

Introduction

A premise of feminist standpoint theory asserts that the structure of society is based on the individual's status in the socio-political system. This individual status is determined by those in positions of power within the social hierarchy: historically, this refers to men and the non-disabled majority. In this social structure, the more layers of difference that distance one from those who determine norms, the further away one is positioned from measured social acceptability: "Systemic differences are determined by all of the individual's characteristics" (Light 1991: 5).

Due to the organisation of social structures and the day-to-day living which separates disabled[female] and non-disabled people, it is not surprising that non-disabled women have not always been aware of the life experiences lived by women with disabilities. For example, violence against women with disabilities assumes many forms, both individual and systemic. It can be covert or overt. This social separation has rendered a large part of the experiences of women with disabilities, including the experience of violence, invisible. Have misconceptions about the lives of women with disabilities contributed to exclusionary practices within the women's movement? How does sexism and ableism influence the resources allotted and distributed to resolve the problem of violence? Is there a correlation between the stresses of a sexist society and the increase in specific impairments among women after age 35? And how do those stresses change when intermixed with ableism?