Disability and Intersecting Statuses: Volume 7

This chapter examines the concept of intersectionality and its application to disability. It examines the historical background and evolution of the concept. The chapter suggests issues which emerge in its application to the interaction of disability with other social statues. It reviews the contributions in this volume and places them into the context of the study of intersectionality and disability.

This chapter is a review of relevant literature as well as a review of the chapters included in the volume.

The chapter reviews the history of the concept of intersectionality as well as some of its conceptual complexities. It compares race, gender and disability as types of statuses and shows how they are the same as well as how they are different. It shows that the fluidity of the status of disability is true to a lesser extent for race and gender. It sets the stage for the authors’ contributions to the volume.

The chapter shows that, in the same ways that race and gender as statuses work together to create inequality, disability and other statuses such as parenthood also work together to affect the lives of, and create inequalities for, persons with disabilities.

The chapter identifies the intellectual relationships of the concepts of master status and intersectionality and discusses some of the complexities of those concepts. It introduces a volume which begins to document the importance of the intersection of disability with other statuses.

The text explores the feminist concept of intersectionality and its adoption within disability studies. The aim is to analyze how feminist and disability movements and theories have managed the issue of struggling against oppression and for equality while acknowledging internal diversity.

Literature review based on the concepts of intersectionality, disabled women, and disability and diversity seeking for explicit and implicit confluences and emerging implications at different levels: social movements, theoretical developments, and policymaking.

Intersectionality is a minor field within disability studies. However, diversity and multiple oppression issues have been addressed by the disability rights movement, after disabled women introduced feminist principles. This intersection of disability and feminist studies has transformed both fields, and at the same time fostered a new paradigm. It situates the claims on the similarities between disabled and nondisabled people, instead of focusing on identity politics.

The chapter acknowledges social movements as key actors in generating and developing significant debates, both in feminist and disability studies. Moreover, it seeks for conceptual tools that promote alliance-building strategies between oppressed groups in the struggle for social justice.

The chapter presents overall perspective of what intersectionality is and how the disability rights movement has addressed it, while seeking broader implications of the analysis of multiple inequalities.

This chapter explores the challenges for the application of the concept of disability to other categories of oppression utilized in the notion of intersectionality.

The concept of intersectionality argues that oppression occurs within the contexts of class, race/ethnicity, religion, gender, and sexual orientation. We raise questions about the applicability of intersectionality to persons with disabilities. Using a Symbolic Interactionist approach to understand the matrix of domination or subordination, we examine how well disability as a category of disadvantage applies to intersectionality.

We argue that the fluid, heterogeneous, and discordant status characteristics, physicality, and diagnostic ambiguity of disability present a considerable challenge for the application of intersectionality as a useful paradigm for disability studies. While several ascribed statuses may contribute to the oppression of persons with disabilities, disability itself offers many unique challenges to understanding the intersection of these traits in the lives of these same people.

The conceptual uniqueness of disability produces rather complex methodological circumstances for understanding the social identity of persons with disabilities who are simultaneously members of additional categories of oppression. These complex and challenging methodological issues can best be met qualitatively, i.e., by approaching disability as lived experience.

For students of intersectionality, this chapter offers a comprehensive analysis and assessment of the concept of disability as a category of oppression.

This study examined access to and quality of supports for families of adolescents with disabilities.

An online survey was completed by family members of transition-aged young adults who had participated in parent training sessions on topics related to transitions to adulthood. Survey responses came from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and 4 U.S. territories.

More than one-third of families reported unmet information needs related to areas such as employment, housing, preparing for adult relationships, and preparing others to support the family members with disabilities. Families of younger transition-aged youth, youth with Autism Spectrum Disorder or other disabilities, and families with lower household incomes reported more unmet needs. The overall quality of services families reported receiving was 2.19 on a 4-point scale of 1 to 4. Parents reported needing more information and quality of supports related to the transition of youth from school to adulthood.

Given the scope of unmet needs, ongoing collaboration between schools, agencies, organizations, and other entities that serve families is critical. While schools play a key role in supporting the transition process, other organizations also have a role.

The results from this survey demonstrate that the need for support is not limited to youth with disabilities, but that family members also have information and support needs related to their roles as caregivers in the transition process.

This survey provides information about unmet needs and current services from a national sample that includes often underserved populations and includes sufficient numbers of respondents to allow comparisons between families, based on the type of disability their family member had.

This chapter reviews qualitative research on parenting children with disabilities published over the last 50 years to explore whether shifts in academic discourse and changes in professional training have affected research on parenting and/or the experiences of parents who are the subject of such research.

An extensive literature search was conducted, and 78 peer-reviewed, qualitative studies on the experience of parenting a child with a disability were included in the sample. Themes were extracted from the reviewed literature and compared across decades.

The findings of the present review suggest that some aspects of the parenting experience have changed very little. In particular, parents continue to experience negative reactions such as stress and anomie, especially early in their children’s lives, and socially imposed barriers such as unhelpful professionals, and a lack of needed services continue to create problems and inspire an entrepreneurial response. In addition, stigmatizing encounters with others continue to be a common occurrence. In contrast to earlier decades, studies conducted in more recent years have begun to use the social model of disability as an analytic frame and also increasingly report that parents are questioning and challenging the concept of “normal” itself.

Additional improvements are needed in professional education and services to reduce the negative reactions experienced by parents of children with disabilities.

The findings of this meta-analysis can serve as a guide to future research on parenting children with disabilities.

Applying an intersectional approach to the analysis of nationally representative population data collected through the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), this chapter attempts to address the congruence between functional status (disability) and other relevant socio-demographic background variables (gender, race, self-reported health status, etc.) that may potentially result in disparate access to education and employment.

Disability is defined and measured using the six American Community Survey (ACS) disability questions. Disability, intersectionality, and equalization of opportunities are assessed in a representative sample of the U.S. adult population as measured on the 2010 NHIS. Data on approximately 32,000 adults age 18 years and over are used to explore, using multivariate techniques, the intersection between disability, age, gender, race/ethnicity, marital status, health insurance, and reported health status, and education and employment outcomes.

The results presented describe a disparity in outcomes of education and employment between disabled and nondisabled adults when controlling for several important background and socio-demographic variables. Exploring the relationships between these variables provides a richer understanding of disability as it exists within the social world.

In order to further improve our understanding of the population dynamics of disability, disability data must be routinely incorporated into national statistics programs. The ACS questions provide a common approach to the definition and measurement of disability within the Federal Statistical System.

This study ¹ examined the relationship between chronic conditions, disabilities, and labor force participation (LFP) and earnings for those aged 50 and above.

Using the 2008 American Community Survey (ACS), we analyzed LFP rates and earnings among disabled and nondisabled older Americans by type of disability. The analysis included both descriptive statistics and a two-staged multivariate analysis.

We found that disabilities had a negative impact on LFP and earnings and that this impact varied significantly by type of disability. Older labor force participants often have only one of the six ACS-defined disabilities, but many have multiple disabilities, or co-occurrences. The particular ACS disability, or set of disabilities, is likely to have different effects on LFP as people age. Additionally, certain kinds of chronic medical conditions increase the likelihood of disability co-occurrence.

Our results inform the development of programs and policies aimed at improving the health of American workers in ways that extend the years in which they are able to remain in the labor force. For example, if older workers remain in the labor force, their economic contribution to the American economy, combined with a lower rate of reliance on public health subsidies, may result in significant cost savings.

This chapter examines the everyday experiences of short women, focusing on the problems they face and the coping strategies used to navigate being short in a heightist society. Further, this chapter views height as a stigmatized identity, which both negatively and positively impacts short women.

Sixteen qualitative interviews were conducted with women 5′2″ and under.

Using the literature on stress, and coping models laid out by social psychologists, this chapter elucidates the unique place of short women in American society.

While there has been a wealth of literature on how short stature impacts men, research on how short stature impacts women has been scant.

This chapter explores the social production of disablement, or disability as a process, and the effect of institutionalized administrative definitions of disability.

This research is based on 12 in-depth interviews with male construction workers in the southeastern United States.

The intersections of age, gender, and class are implicated in the production of occupational disablement. In addition, the power of definition residing with administrative entities plays an important role in how workers come to understand disability and disablement, ultimately affecting their ability to be self-advocates. This study also suggests that current conceptualizations of disability are not adequate for these participants whose experiences of disablement highlight its processual nature.

“Becoming” disabled, constricted activities outside of those defined by Activities of Daily Living (ADLs) or Instrumental Activities of Daily Living (IADLs), and activity limitation due to significant pain and discomfort are all issues that should be addressed in disability conceptualization.

Previous quantitative research documents that college students with disabilities do not attain higher education at rates equal to their nondisabled peers. This qualitative study posits that socioeconomic status (SES) is a determinant of this discrepancy, and explores how SES and disability shape the college experience of New York City (NYC) students with learning disabilities (LDs), specifically.

Research findings from semi-structured interviews with students with LDs (n = 10) at a low-SES and a high-SES colleges are presented against the backdrop of administrative data from NYC baccalaureate-granting colleges (n = 44), disability staff surveys (n = 21), and disability staff interviews (n = 9). Examined through the lens of political economy, qualitative data demonstrate the ways colleges create environments that enable or hinder student success through difference in policy implementation.

Student themes like stress, identity, and entitlement are discussed against the theoretical and empirical exploration of the intersectionality of SES and disability. Socioeconomic differences are linked to variation in students’ college choice, accessing evaluations, requesting accommodations, and receiving supplementary supports.

The aim of this chapter is to explore the marginal dimensions of disability, gender and caste in the context of Indian economy in recent globalizing times.

Using an intersectional approach it is argued that caste, gender and disability implicate and impact the opportunities available to persons as these account for the marginalities in a developing economy. The chapter is based on ethnographic and empirical data and it critically analyses the trends.

This study shows how social and cultural frames on one hand and the nature of diverse occupational pursuits on the other set the context within which a person with dalit ¹ status, with impairments and also a woman is likely to suffer the most. Social contexts are diverse and situation of persons within different groups varies. The chapter also examines state and NGO initiatives in this regard and suggests the limitations and possibilities of dalits with disabilities having access to resources within neo-liberal economy.

The findings expand the scope of disability research having policy implications.