Medicine, gender, and disability: disabled women's health care encounters.
In this article I examine the intersection of gender and disability in the medical arena by considering disabled women's experiences of receiving health care in the United Kingdom. Drawing on the "social model of disability," I focus on the attitudes and practices of doctors. I use two sources of qualitative data: (i) 68 disabled women's narratives gathered in the United Kingdom in 1996-1997; (ii) interviews with 17 disabled women regarding their reproductive experiences in the United Kingdom. I suggest that disabled women health service users are at risk of experiencing oppressive medical practices because two forces of oppression appear to be frequently, and interactively, in play: patriarchy and disablism.
Thomas
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Department of Applied Social Science, Lancaster University, Cartmel College, United Kingdom. C.Thomas@lancaster.ac.uk
D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D001294:Attitude to Health; D001318:Authoritarianism; D006233:Persons with Disabilities / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008960:Models, Psychological; D015404:Nursing Methodology Research; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D010820:Physicians / Q000523:psychology*; D011287:Prejudice; D011787:Quality of Health Care; D012737:Sex Factors; D013222:State Medicine / Q000592:standards*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D006113:United Kingdom; D014930:Women / Q000523:psychology*; D016387:Women's Health