S3-Day 9: Women with Disabilities: Wholeness in Brokenness

Margarita with a straw, the movie explained the suffering of a woman with disability and sexuality. It explicitly displays the experience of a woman with disability and her bi-sexual sexual orientation. 

Women with Disabilities always face many challenges in their life journey, such as abuse, shame, blame, humiliation and much more. Women with Disabilities are alienated even in places of worship. There is discrimination based on caste, class, gender, (dis)ability, etc. Women with intellectual or learning disabilities are considered as dirty by the society. People are not comfortable with them as they make unpleasant sound. Their mannerisms, uninhibited display of feelings embarrass the society, therefore it excludes them completely. The society is unaware of the challenges and the expectations of the women with the disabilities. Society considers them as unattractive, it excludes them and ironically blames them for living in a dirty environment. 

Feminist disability Scholars such as Thomas, Morris, Meekosha, Ghai, Begum, Fine and Asch, have highlighted that women with disabilities are often considered as asexual and incapable of taking on sexual, reproductive and maternal roles by the society.[1] Feminists with disabilities argue for the rights of women with disabilities to get married, have babies and to be parents of the children with disabilities. They argue against selective abortion solely on the criterion that the fetuses are expected to have disabilities.[2] If Women with Disabilities are mothers, they are vulnerable to blame and scrutiny[3]. 

Women with the disabilities face many barriers, which become burden in their public presence and crumble them to their private spaces. Their public sphere is constrained by poverty, inadequate housing and inaccessibility of public spaces. Their private sphere is threatened by rape, possibilities of single parenting, vulnerability to abuse, their embodied difference not accommodated to policies and programme such as income generating, employment, personal and child care services, family support and community inclusion.[4] Women with Disabilities do not gain access to the social symbolic life of the worship place and the worship place does not gain the access to the social symbolic lives of the Women with Disabilities.[5]

The various factors which constitute barriers to inclusion of women with disabilities are structural, attitudinal, societal, political, cultural, familial, economic, legal, stereotypical, and above all oppression of the patriarchal hierarchical structure and norms of the society. The various barriers for inclusion are cultural bias, double discrimination, invisibility, violence, schools in inaccessible location, inaccessible to rest room facilities, inaccessible building structures, inaccessible to transport facilities, inaccessible to special education, lack of role models and shortage of women with disabilities as mentors.[6]

Neither the women with disabilities nor their parents are sinners. But it is the society commits a sin against Women with Disabilities and their families by discriminating, prejudicing and excluding.[7] There is an immediate need to discern the divine through their experiences. We must discern the divine from their so-called “dirty” places. They are innocent people. They only know to love. They enjoy delicious food. They have interest to listen music, and dance. Some like to sing, play musical instruments. They live in their own world.  They are oppressed and marginalized by the society but Women with Disabilities protest and resist the oppression of the society. Women with disabilities too are created in the image of the divine. Disability is wholeness in brokenness. We can discern the love of divine through human kindness. We can understand the wholeness in the brokenness of the divine by understanding the experiences of women with disabilities.[8] 

In general, women with disabilities are not only victims but also victors. They are very creative and productive. They are made vulnerable yet powerful. They are the agents of the transformation of the society. We must treat them with dignity and understand the pain and the struggles of them and their parents/care takers. Are we willing to discern the divine love and energy that flows through the wholeness in brokenness from the experiences of the women with disabilities in the so called “Dirty Places”? 

Prayer: 

O Divine! help us to discern your love and energy which flows out through your wholeness in our brokenness. Help us to be in solidarity with the women with the disabilities to fight against the stigma, discrimination and any sort of oppression against them. Guide us to create an inclusive, just and egalitarian society. Amen. 

Author: Nivedha 

About the Author: Nivedha is a student of theology pursuing her Master of Theology in the department of Women’s Studies department at The United Theological College, Bangalore. Her area of interest is Women with Disabilities.

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References:

[1] Renu Addlakha (ed), Disability Studies in India: Global Discourses, Local Realities (New Delhi: Routledge, 2013), 16. 

[2] Amos Yong, Theology and Down Syndrome: Reimagining Disability in Late Modernity (Texas: Baylor University Press, 2007), 138 and 124. 

[3] Claudia Malacrida, “Mothering and Disability,” Routledge Handbook of Disability Studies edited by Nick Watson, Alan Roulstone and Carol Thomas (London: Routledge, 2014), 392-393. 

[4]Claudia Malacrida, “Mothering and Disability,” in Routledge Handbook of Disability Studies edited by Nick Watson, Alan Roulstone and Carol Thomas (London: Routledge, 2014), 392-393. 

[5]Nancy L. Eiesland, The Disabled God: Toward a Liberatory Theology of Disability (New York: Abingdon Press, 1994), 20. 

[6] Stephanie Ortoleva, “Yes, Girls and Women with Disabilities do Math! An Intersectional Analysis,” in Disability, Gender and the Trajectories of power edited by Asha Hans (New Delhi : SAGE, 2015), 189-194. 

[7] K.C. Abraham, “Theological Reflections on the Experience of the disabled” in Doing Theology from Disability Perspective: A Theological Resource Book on Disability edited by Wati Longchar and Gordon Cowans (Manila: ATESEA, 2007), 144. 

[8] K.C.Abraham and Molly Abraham, “Broken God in the Midst of Broken People”, in Persons with Disabilities in Society: Problems and Challenges edited by Wati Longchar and Gordon Cowans (Manila: ATESEA, 2007), 148-149.