Women’s rights movements are said to have not given disabled women’s needs sufficient importance while, at the same time, disability rights movements have not given enough prominence to disabled women’s rights. As a result, gender-specific issues, such as sexual health and reproductive rights of disabled women, have remained on the margins of rights-based discourse.
Reproductive rights have been interpreted as the right to obtain contraception and safe, legal abortion. However, disabled women are still combating stigma, discrimination and intimidation related to access to sexual health screening, forced contraception and assumed parental inadequacy due to biases and prejudice held in society.
Disabled women, especially those with intellectual disability, tend not to be accepted as having an adult status and remain constrained by the community’s negative perceptions and assumptions. They are not expected to become girlfriends or lovers and are often told that marriage is not a possibility and, even less, motherhood.
It is often the case that disabled women are not given information about sexuality and birth control as it is assumed they do not require it. Women with intellectual disability are also reported to lack knowledge and understanding about the purpose of sexual health screening procedures as well as their recommended frequency, ultimately believing that they are not necessary.
The term ‘newgenics’ describes subtle, overt or informal ways in which disabled women’s reproductive possibilities continue to be both actively or passively policed. Pressure is often exerted by family members, by care and medical personnel on women with physical, sensorial, psychosocial or intellectual impairments to undergo sterilisation or take up long-term contraception in order to avoid the possibility of becoming mothers.
Medical choices concerning contraception and surgical irreversible methods, such as sterilisation, have been performed without their consent, with the aim to protect against unwanted pregnancy. There is also often the concern that disabled women will produce a child with similar conditions.
Disabled women are not expected to become girlfriends or lovers- Claire Azzopardi Lane
Disabled women often encounter lack of sensitivity from health professionals. Sexual healthcare providers are reported to be insensitive to their needs and reticent to discuss key reproductive health issues with them and, at times, also said to feel uncomfortable treating disabled women.
Such behaviour translates to perceiving disabled women as not being eligible for traditional societal female roles. Negative attitudes held by healthcare professionals not only affect the way disabled women see themselves, they also restrict necessary information required by these women, affecting their ability to make choices related to their sexual and reproductive lives.
Motherhood can be an important and natural part of a women’s identity, yet, it is a forbidden issue for disabled women, especially for those with intellectual disability. Society still questions their right to become mothers, reinforcing beliefs that they are unable to adequately care for their children.
Since it is still not considered to be culturally normative for disabled women to become mothers, those who do transgress social norms. Their status as mothers highlights their sexuality in a society that tends to see just their impairments first and foremost, rather than seeing them as women first.
Malta’s Equal Opportunities Act (2000) recognises discrimination against sexual and reproductive health on grounds of disability while both the National Disability Policy (2014) and the National Disability Strategy (2016) outline the right to sexual autonomy and the need for sex education, sexual health services and support structures.
However, the realities of disabled women, which are often adversely affected by social and political barriers, reflect on how disadvantaged, disempowered and excluded this minority group is.
Celebrating Women’s Day seems a cosmetic formality when considering the multifaceted discrimination these women experience.
Consequently, Women’s Day should be an opportunity to reflect on the representation of disabled women in social, political and feminist arenas and to ensure that their rights are upheld consistently.
Claire Azzopardi Lane, deputy dean of the Faculty for Social Well-being.