Date of Award
5-2016
Degree Type
Research Paper
Degree Name
Master of Arts in International Development and Social Change (IDSC)
Department
International Development, Community and Environment
Chief Instructor
Marianne Sarkis
Second Reader
Ellen Foley
Keywords
women, gender, disability, poverty, violence, South Africa
Abstract
Impoverished women who have disabilities make up some of the most isolated and overlooked people in the world. Often, they are excluded from women’s movements due to their disability, disability movements due to their gender, and One-Third World contexts due to their poverty. Gender, socioeconomic status, and disability create multiple layers of discrimination. These intersectional forces impact the ways in which impoverished women with disabilities experience violence, making them two to four times as prone to violence as their able-bodied counterparts. In low resource settings, women with disabilities encounter many forms of violence, including caretaker abuse, forced sterilization, and sexual violence. In South Africa, the lack of services and state-sponsored support for impoverished women with disabilities worsens their situation. In an effort to address this deficit, attention should be focused on providing and creating specialized organizations and programs to support women with disabilities who experience violence.
Recommended Citation
Humphrey, Megan, "THE INTERSECTIONALITY OF POVERTY, DISABILITY, AND GENDER AS A FRAMEWORK TO UNDERSTAND VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN WITH DISABILITIES: A CASE STUDY OF SOUTH AFRICA" (2016). International Development, Community and Environment (IDCE). 36.
https://commons.clarku.edu/idce_masters_papers/36