Lives of Women

It is almost as if people with disabilities are alien beings who inhabit one of those alternative universes, the existence of which scientists have begun to postulate recently (4), and an impenetrable, unknowable shadow universe where the ordinary conventions of human society do not apply. There are a number of reasons for the continuing tendency to relegate persons with disabilities to this shadow universe, a tendency which is as well entrenched in the women's movement as anywhere else, but they all ultimately derive from the way in which society has always viewed disability as alienating, as being a 'handicap' which prevents a person from leading a fulfilling and useful life.

There is a widely held belief that the mere fact of having a disability is the cause of all a person's problems. This is simply not true in the majority of cases. A disability may be uncomfortable to carry about, but it does not of itself constitute a handicap. The handicap arises from the barriers which people with disabilities encounter in the social milieu in which they live. Melbourne disability rights activist Fiona Strahan stated this proposition very clearly in her address to an International Women's Day rally in 1989:"It (disability) is not a medical problem. Nor is able-ism just a set of prejudicial ideas about disabled people......Our societal position has been shaped by history and is inextricably woven into the fabric of our culture. There is no reason to assume that medical conditions or physical, emotional or intellectual differences are disabilities or that they should be necessarily stigmatising".

In Strahan's view, the marginalisation of people with disabilities derives from the period of the industrial revolution, when they began to be regarded as useless for generating productivity and hence profits, like broken machines. This is compounded by the exaggerated individualism of modern western society where it is almost a crime not to be self-sufficient and independent. She concludes: Disability keeps being regarded as problematic for society, not as a socially constructed problem. There is some support for Strahan's argument in the format of the Australian Bureau of Statistics publication Disability and Handicap, which provides statistics on the number of persons with disabilities in Australia and their educational, employment and residential status. The publication distinguishes between people who have a disability and people who are 'handicapped'.

In many cases limitations in these areas are not so much a result of the disability per se, but a function of the environment in which the person has to operate. For example, mobility may not be so much of a problem where there is adequate public transport, or where there are wheelchair accessible buildings; schooling may not be a problem where there are sufficient teachers trained to assist the child with a disability. It might be more appropriate for the community to request its statisticians to tabulate the number of people with a disability who experience barriers to their day to day activities. Such an approach would automatically focus attention on the way society functions in relation to people with disabilities, rather than implying that there is a class of person who is invariably 'handicapped' irrespective of the social milieu in which they live.