Women with disabilities: a challenge for the feminist theory

Abstract

The constant development of feminist theories allows for the gradual inclusion of different fields of knowledge as a way of taking into account the diversity of women. Thus, feminism shows its capacity to renew itself and question, once and again, its own epistemological propositions. Far from being a problem, this is, in fact, the strength of feminism or, more precisely, feminisms: their flexibility to include all women through dialogue and debate, both in the realm of political activism and of theory. The movement of women with disabilities is quite new in Spain and thus, it represents a significant theoretical and practical challenge for feminism. The diversity of the concept of disability itself and its various manifestations (physical, sensory, intellectual...), linked to the wide corpus of feminist theory, constitute a complex field which is being only recently studied from a theoretical point of view. In this article, I shall examine the diverse conceptualizations around women with disabilities. To do so, I will focus on their interaction with feminist theories in order to show their most problematic and challenging issues and taking into account how theoretical aspects influence the daily lives of women. A feminist theory of disability will favour enrichment for feminisms, for disability studies and for the lives of the women with disabilities themselves.

Keywords

• discapacidad
• género
• teoría feminista
• movimiento asociativo
• cuerpo
• estereotipo
• identidad