A study on intersectional discrimination in employment against disabled women in the UK

Abstract

The present study examined the employment status of disabled and nondisabled men and women in the United Kingdom. Using the 2009–14 Life Opportunities Survey (N = 32,355 observations), the study empirically examined how the intersection of disability and gender affects disabled women and their employment status in the UK. Random effects multinomial and logistic regression models were used. Findings indicated that disabled women were significantly less likely to be employed and more likely to be economically inactive than disabled men, nondisabled women, and nondisabled men. They were also significantly the least likely to work full-time among the four groups. Disabled women were significantly less likely to be supervisors than disabled men and felt more limited in the type or amount of paid work they could do than nondisabled women. The present study provided empirical evidence to policymakers interested in developing policies that better address intersectional discrimination and enhance disabled women’s employment status.

Keywords:

• disabled women
• employment status
• intersectional discrimination
• random effects modeling
• United Kingdom

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Dr. Matt Dickson for providing many useful discussions and help in the methodology. Also, we wish to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions for improving the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The authors thank the Lurie Institute for Disability Policy, Brandeis University, for funding this study.