Balancing safety and autonomy: structural and social barriers affecting the exercise participation of women with disabilities in community recreation and fitness facilities

Abstract

Women with disabilities consider exercise an important health promotion activity. A lack of accessible facilities within the community has been identified as a major limiting factor to exercise participation among women with disabilities. To increase exercise participation among women with disabilities, we need to understand the structural and social barriers that they face within community recreation and fitness facilities. Interviews were conducted with 15 women living with disabilities in Toronto, Canada, to explore their experiences with accessibility in community recreation and fitness facilities. Qualitative content analysis resulted in the development of two key themes that describe how women negotiated their exercise participation in community facilities. The first theme describes how women negotiated barriers in the built environment of community exercise facilities by making trade-offs to their personal safety in favour of autonomous exercise participation The second theme describes how staff members’ assumptions and lack of knowledge about disabilities created social barriers that affected women’s exercise participation. These findings suggest that simply removing structural barriers and providing ‘accessible’ equipment is not sufficient to truly increase facility accessibility. Although accessibility features within the built environment of community facilities (e.g. elevators, pool-chair lifts and grab bars) can provide increased safety and accessibility to participants, a lack of maintenance and/or inadequate staff training in their use may limit women’s autonomous use of facilities. Training of staff members to work with women with disabilities is also necessary to address social barriers to women’s exercise participation in community recreation and fitness facilities.

Keywords:

• women
• exercise
• disability
• safety
• barriers

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the generous contributions made by all research participants. This research received financial support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.