(Th)reading Rights and Justice: Women and Girls with Disabilities

ABSTRACT

Despite calls for no one to be left behind, women and girls with disabilities continue to face systemic marginalisation and gaps in rights protections that limit their access to education, health, public services, and justice. Research in transnational and international relations offers little to help understand this gendered disability injustice. This article examines how discussions of elements of justice as redistributive, recognition, participative and restorative address people with disabilities as well as how disability rights within the United Nations treaty body system address the four elements of justice. Drawing on both academic and community critiques of both disability rights and justice, the article asks how our understandings of justice and rights perpetuate these exclusions and what transformative changes are required to redress the marginalisation of women and girls with disabilities.

KEYWORDS:

• Justice
• human rights
• disabilities
• women
• redistributive
• recognition
• participation
• restorative
• access
• transformative change

Introduction

One in five women around the world, or roughly 780 million women, live with disabilities (World Health Organization and World Bank 2011). The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) Article 6 notes that women with disabilities are subject to multiple and intersecting types of discrimination and states should take measures to ensure their full enjoyment of human rights. Women and girls with disabilities face many barriers to realising their rights including accessibility in the built or physical environments, in communications and access to information, access to services, in addition to discrimination, stereotyping and stigma.

There has been increasing attention to the experiences of women and girls with disabilities in international organisations like UN Women, the World Bank, and through the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Both UN Women and the World Bank demonstrate the importance of recognition in law and its implementation. Using data from World Bank’s Women, Business and Law program, Braunmiller (2020) notes the lack of inclusion of women with disabilities in rights protections in laws:

While 71 economies have a constitutional provision that guarantees equal rights for persons with disabilities, none of the analyzed constitutions mention women with disabilities. With regards to statutory laws, 138 economies have a law, other than the constitution, that addresses the rights of persons with disabilities. However, only one-fourth of the analyzed economies – or 35 to be exact – explicitly recognize and protect the rights of women with disabilities in their legal framework (n.p.).

UN Women suggests that the gap in legal protections reinforces the systemic marginalisation and exclusion of women and girls with disabilities and leads to “less access to: education, health care (including sexual and reproductive health), information, public services, justice as well as less participation in civic and political processes and decision-making” (2019). Perhaps the most compelling evidence is the call of the SDGs to leave no one behind and the data that suggests that women and girls with disabilities are most often left behind (United Nations 2019; Browne 2017).

Each of these indicate an emergent global norm around gendered disability justice. This type of prescriptive norm has been defined as “acknowledged, but not necessarily accepted, understandings of collective ambitions” (Fejerskov et al. 2019, 7). The acknowledged situation is that women and girls with disabilities are among the most excluded, marginalised, or disadvantaged women or people in the world and experience intersectional discrimination which increases their barriers and limits their ability to claim their rights. The collective ambitions are to make visible experiences that have often been ignored and overlooked in policies, activism, and day-to-day life and hold as valuable the knowledges that come from those experiences. The goals are to ensure that women and girls with disabilities can and do fully participate in their families and communities.

One place to begin this analysis is by asking how the study of international and transnational relations addresses this emergent global norm. As the literature review below indicates, there has been little attention to disability, let alone gendered disability justice. An obvious next step is to examine the ways in which the inter-state system, including United Nations treaty bodies, address gendered disability justice. As I argue below, the understandings used in this system emerged in response to broader discussions of justice. This article asks then how do conceptions of justice and rights help us understand and address the experiences of girls and women with disabilities?

This article examines three existing literature threads related to justice and disability rights. The first thread is with those who think systematically about justice. Elements of justice have been discussed by theorists including Iris Marion Young (2011), Nancy Fraser (1995, 1999) and others, and further developed in the environmental justice literature including by Walker (2010), Malin et al. (2019) and Manning (2021). Together these authors have identified four elements of justice: distributive or redistributive; procedural or participative; recognition; and restorative. Each of these elements have been fruitful areas of thought and reflection, including work which demonstrates the shadow sides of these elements. While many justice theorists presume a universal applicability of their version of justice to all humans including people with disabilities, most disability scholars challenge this. They argue that experiences of disability have been absent from discussions of justice.

The second thread is from those who think, reflect and act on disability rights in the context of human rights and begin with the recognition that disability rights are human rights. Most notable contributions are the formal Comments made by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities as they seek to develop a body of knowledge about what disability rights are, what they aren’t, and how tools like the CRPD can be used to affect change for women and girls with disabilities. These go together with observations on and analyses of implementation of the CRPD and other international agreements by countries, civil society actions in holding governments accountable for implementing human rights, and legal theorists and other researchers in tracing patterns in human rights development and implementation.

A third thread is those who look critically at the inter-relationships between disability rights and justice. This body of literature (for example, Meekosha and Soldatic 2011; Soldatic 2013) reminds us of the inherently individualist nature of human rights, the state-centric approach of the United Nations human rights system which leads to significant gaps in disability justice, and the global Northern orientation of discussions of both rights and justice. Some authors foreground the colonising history and nature of rights (Grech and Soldatic 2015; Nguyen 2018; Stienstra 2018) and the need for decolonising approaches to justice.

By engaging critically with all these threads, I offer strategies to understand gaps and move towards transformational change in the lives of women and girls with disabilities around the world. Together, these help to include experiences of girls and women with disabilities.

Disability and transnational and international relations

No systemic scholarship exists that includes disability in thinking about transnational or international relations, like Weber’s Queer International Relations (2016) or the wide range of publications related to gender and international relations. As discussed below, some scholars identify assumptions about disability that are foundational to global society, as well as how transnational actions, including those by states, create and perpetuate disabling actions. A limited number of scholars noted below have identified the paradox of disability’s absence and presence in international relations. Some have also indicated key concepts that come from critical disability studies and other literature that have relevance to the transnational and international relations.

For example, within more traditional areas of international relations both Stienstra (2002) and Mason (2015) draw out the ways in which ableist understandings of productivity and independence are foundational in transnational practices and policies. Connell (2011) and Puar (2017) encourage recognition and analysis of the ways in which states are complicit in the production of impairment and disablement. Puar uses the concept of debility to illustrate how neoliberal capitalism relies on the ability to drain the life out of workers for the good of capitalism. Connell illustrates colonisation relied on the social embodiment of power: “a deployment of force, that in addition to disabled individuals, collectively disabled whole populations” (2011, 1373). Kim (2016) extends the analysis of ableist practices of states to look at what she called curative violence – the pursuit of cure and rehabilitation to provide “a normative body that is productive for capitalism” (Luu 2019, 114).

The contributions of critical disability studies reflect both the complexity of experiences of people with disabilities as well and the wide range of transnational contexts. Christian (2018) introduces an autistic approach to international relations, framing it around the use of autistic metaphors which rely on and perpetuate ableism in international relations. Christian argues that the use of these metaphors is not neutral but they “are ableist because they shape or reinforce understandings of autism that often oversimplify, overgeneralise, or otherwise negatively misrepresent autism and Autistic people” (2018, 465). Maglajlić (2021) illustrates a mad studies analysis of conflict and argues that analysis of madness in war is dominated by medical professionals with a medicalized view and that development practitioners “have proven to be equally colonising in relation to such experiences [of madness and political conflict]” (224). Wehbi (2011, 2012) builds a similar argument about the colonising approaches used with people with disabilities in the context of war in Lebanon and extends it to identify the ways in which foreign funding is used to limit disability activism. Wehbi et al. (2010) underscore the neo-colonial discourses at play about disability among Canadian international non-governmental organisations. Stienstra (2017) draws out the ways in which Canada’s development policies rely on medicalized approaches to disability which reinforces dependency among people with disabilities and ignores rights-based activism. Stienstra also demonstrates how the gender-first approach to development remains silent on disability inclusion. Mason (2019) suggests that the gender-based analysis undertaken in Canadian foreign policy has been unable to address intersectionality successfully.

While there are other contributions made by scholars to our thinking about disability and transnational and international relations, an exhaustive review is beyond the scope of this article. Rather the point of this section is to identify some key areas essential to including gendered disability in analyses of transnational and international relations. What this review illustrates is that the impact of ableism is much wider than current attention to it in international relations suggests and that a medicalized understanding of and approach to bodies has and is at the foundation of many transnational development and post-conflict practices. It also offers a critical reflection on gender, intersectionality and international relations and the silences evident around disability. Finally, the authors discussed earlier in this section suggest that scholars of international relations would be well-served by reading in critical disability studies to understand more about how the range of human bodies are shaped by and in turn shape international and transnational relations. Indeed, they illustrate how many of our transnational practices create or perpetuate disability, without attention to the related costs and that these reciprocal relations of power and inequity remain unexamined and unaddressed in both scholarship and practice.

While the gaps around disability and gender in international relations are significant, considering the broader literature around disability rights and justice offers a way in to thinking about how to address these gaps in academic research as well as how to think about transformative practices to include women and girls with disabilities in transnational policies and practices.

First thread: elements of justice

While discussions of justice have been going on for centuries, they have primarily focused on the “morally proper distribution of benefits and burdens among society’s members” (Young 2011, 15). Although some theorists equate (equitable) distribution with justice, including Marx, Rawls, Sens and Dworkin¹, since the 1990s there has been an increased focus on other aspects of justice.

In response to some critiques of distributive justice, Charles Taylor (1992), Axel Honneth (1995) and Nancy Fraser (1995, 1999, 2000) argue justice is also about recognition by individuals, the state, and in cultural practices and symbols. In the context of the work of Hegel, Taylor, Fanon and Indigenous Peoples in Canada, Glen Coulthard (2014) identifies key aspects of recognition. Coulthard challenges Hegel’s argument that recognition is relational and requires mutual recognition, asserting that these relations are asymmetrical with the state mediating relations of recognition. In colonial states, these inequalities mean that recognition by the state will fail to substantively modify the power inequalities. More than that, Coulthard argues that when recognition calls into question the sovereignty of the state, as in the case of Indigenous Peoples, recognition may be seen as a threat.

Equally important in developing this element of justice are the ways in which recognition fails to happen – through misrecognition, non-recognition, invisibility, and disrespect (Williams 2014). Fraser (1999) sees misrecognition as linked to institutionalised cultural patterns that can diminish opportunities for participation and burden some “with excessive ascribed “difference” from others or failing to acknowledge their distinctiveness” (9). Coulthard argues, using Fanon, that addressing misrecognition must be seen both as a structural issue and a subjective or psychological one. When reduced to a structural issue, he suggests, we fail to recognise the ways in which individuals take on and internalise colonial identities. The struggle to shed these identities is, for Coulthard, the only way to ensure self-transformation and self-recognition.

Young argues that participation is another element of justice: “All persons should have the right and opportunity to participate in the deliberation and decision-making of the institutions to which their actions contribute or which directly affect their actions” (2011, 91). Others have called this the procedural element of justice. Walker (2010) suggests that procedural justice is tied up with access and information, in addition to procedural fairness. Thus, for there to be procedural justice, people need not only be able to participate, or have the necessary information to participate, but need to participate in the embedded power relations at work within and outside formal decision-making. Several authors suggest procedural justice involves the opportunity to participate authentically or meaningfully in decision-making in addition to accountability from and by governments and corporations (Malin et al. 2019, Kojola 2019).

Each of these three elements of justice relates to the others. For example, you need to have sufficient material benefits (distribution), and your presence, experiences, or ways of knowing need to be acknowledged (recognition) in order to participate in decision-making processes.

The environmental justice literature has added a fourth element of justice – restorative – which Malin et al. (2019) argue is the recognition of the historical exclusion and displacement of Indigenous Peoples from their historical lands and the need for processes to reclaim, remediate and restore these injustices. This may involve remediating lands and community well-being after mining. Beckett and Keeling explicitly link restoration with the ethics of care when they assert: “Engaging theories of repair and “matters of care” push remediation beyond the act of cleaning up toxic and degraded landscapes, towards a focus on the ongoing processes of trust building, reconciliation, and perpetual care for humans, animals and environments alike” (2019, 217).

The restorative element of justice echoes the rich literature related to restorative justice and reparations in criminal justice and international law. In this approach, there is a recognition of the historical wrongs that need to be righted, often with recompense (Capeheart and Milovanovic 2020, Woolford and Ratner 2010). In much of this literature, the lineage of restorative justice is traced through Western philosophy and practices and considered in the recent context of Truth and Reconciliation Commissions. Mangena (2015) challenges these Eurocentric accounts of restorative justice, arguing instead that restorative justice is deeply embedded in Indigenous African history and linked with the concept of ubuntu. Some (Woolford 2010) have argued restorative justice can be a form of redistributive justice, while others suggest that relational pieces of restorative justice go beyond what distributive justice encompasses (Young 2011).

Few of those engaged in these discussions of the elements of justice discuss the experiences of people with disabilities, let alone women and girls with disabilities. Beaudry (2021) argues for an expansion of Rawls’ contract theory to include people with intellectual disabilities, recognising that it is an incomplete solution for their justice. Hartley (2011), Terzi (2010) and Stein (2006) all reinforce the critique of Rawls’ approach for its inability to address and include people with disabilities. An increasing number of scholars have recognised the gap in discussions of justice that Riddle (2014) notes:

People with disabilities have been put by the wayside in a very innocent manner – most egalitarian theorists have often simply not thought about people with disabilities because, at first glance, the type of injustices they suffer do not closely resemble the type they are most familiar with or find most pressing (n.p.).

For some, the capabilities approach used by Nussbaum (2006) provides an alternative and more promising approach to justice in part because it explicitly addresses disability (Shakespeare and Watson 2018; Hartley 2011; Terzi 2010). Terzi argues that by “placing human heterogeneity at the core of the [capability] metric, and in considering disability as a specific human variation, rather than an extreme case to be deferred, the capability approach provides a metric that evaluates the demands of disability as fundamental demands of justice” (2010, 167).

For others (Mladenov 2016; Knight 2015; Parker 2007), Nancy Fraser’s approach to justice offers important insights for thinking about disability and inclusion. Knight (2015), for example, argues that Fraser’s procedural parity model offers a template for procedural justice and meaningful inclusion. Parker’s (2006) discussion of United Nations human rights and disability argues that Fraser’s conceptions of redistribution and recognition are valuable because they recognise “multiple, and sometimes competing, sources of discrimination which can be entrenched within the very fabric of society” (67).

Mladenov (2016) provides the most substantive engagement with Fraser’s approach to justice arguing that understanding and addressing disability is critical to implementing transformative strategies to address injustice related to redistribution, recognition, and representation. He contends that Fraser’s parity of participation approach is similar to that identified by the disability community as early as the 1970s in which “a society is just only when it enables all of its adult members to interact with each other as peers, and this necessarily includes disabled people” (Mladenov 2016, 1228). In the context of political representation, he argues that transnationalizing democracy needs to redress produced impairments, such as the impacts on garment factory workers in the Rana Plaza collapse, to reveal what Fraser calls the “all-subjected principle”.² “According to this principle, all those who are subject to a given governance structure have moral standing as subjects of justice in relation to it” (Fraser 2008, 411). Temper (2019) echoes the challenges of working within the state system for justice arguing that a decolonising justice must go beyond the three elements of justice discussed earlier:

rather than simply participation, justice must include self-governing authority; that rather than distribution (of nature), environmental justice calls for breaking down the dualism between humans and nature, and beyond recognition, what is needed is epistemic justice and self-affirmation. I question the capacity of the state and legal framework for accommodating such a decolonial and transformative environmental justice and instead propose that direct action, and assertion of responsibility and care may serve as more effective tools of resistance (104-5).

Few of those who discuss restorative justice engage explicitly on disability. For many in the environmental studies literature disability (or impairment) is lurking as something to be prevented by restorative actions This may be preventing pregnant women from having fetuses affected by chemicals in the air or water that result from mining (Deer & Kronk Warner 2019; Middeldorp et al. 2016). Johnson (2017, 83) asks what this dread and avoidance mean for people with disabilities: “We need to ask ourselves what it means for disabled persons when we use the fear of possible disability in confronting environmental injustice and advocating for changes in policy regarding the environment. Constant reference to environmental causes of disability renders those who are disabled passive recipients of harm and implies their inability to be full participants in environmental justice work.” Berghs (2017) makes an explicit link between ubuntu, disability and biodiversity arguing that ubuntu helps to frame disability as part of biodiversity or the range of human diversity, which can, in turn lead not only to restorative justice but transformational disability politics.

From these discussions of elements of justice and disability, what can we learn about the transformative inclusion of women and girls with disabilities? First, we note that when equality is used as the basis for justice, people with disabilities are usually not included and if they are, gender is often not addressed. Or, as Riddle (2014, n.p.) notes, they have been put by the wayside because “the type of injustices they suffer do not closely resemble the type they [the authors] are most familiar with or find most pressing.” The capabilities approach, especially as developed by Nussbaum, in addition to discussions of disability as illustrative of biodiversity, demonstrate the heterogeneity of humanity and the inclusion of disability as part of the range of what it means to be human, but fail to address links between gender and disability. Fraser’s all-subjected principle, and its application to the production of impairments by Mladenov, bring discussions of justice beyond the Westphalian state system and to those who have been affected by particular actions, thus widening our understanding of what representation entails.

One aspect of the Westphalian state system that has addressed disability has been the human rights system and disability rights are the second thread in this discussion.

Second thread: disability rights

In 2006 the United Nations adopted the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). By May 2022, 185 countries had ratified the Convention. For many people with disabilities, the CRPD offers the first internationally recognised commitment to their human rights. Around the world disabled people and their representative organisations have seen the CRPD as a tool to educate, monitor and advocate for their rights both within their own countries and transnationally. Researchers and community organisations have also developed a body of literature that reflects on the CRPD itself as well as on its implementation (Connelly 2009, Lang et al. 2011, Byrne 2013, Kayess et al. 2014, Hoffman et al. 2016, Skarstad and Stein 2018; Katsui and Chalklen 2020).

With that situated engagement with norms of disability rights (Fejerskov et al. 2019), the CRPD offers a set of prescribed norms in relation to who people with disabilities are and how states should ensure their full rights including in areas like living situations, access to justice, international cooperation, and many others. The CRPD also highlights the circumstances of groups of disabled people including women and children. The implementation of these norms is done at a national or state level, with countries which ratify the Convention regularly reporting on their progress. A committee of independent experts, the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, monitors the implementation by states and provides interpretive guidance on issues related to the Convention.

The General Comments of the Committee offer insight into how the experts understand the relationships between the prescribed disability rights in the CRPD and broader notions of justice. Comment 6 specifically outlines how it understands different dimensions of equality evident in the CRPD:

Inclusive equality is a new model of equality developed throughout the Convention. It embraces a substantive model of equality and extends and elaborates on the content of equality in: (a) a fair redistributive dimension to address socioeconomic disadvantages; (b) a recognition dimension to combat stigma, stereotyping, prejudice and violence and to recognize the dignity of human beings and their intersectionality; (c) a participative dimension to reaffirm the social nature of people as members of social groups and the full recognition of humanity through inclusion in society; and (d) an accommodating dimension to make space for difference as a matter of human dignity. The Convention is based on inclusive equality (CRPD 2018, 3 emphasis added).

As noted in the highlighted sections of this quote, there is considerable overlap between the four elements of justice described in the previous section, and the dimensions of inclusive equality identified by the Committee (see Table 1).

Table 1. Threads of disability rights and justice.

	Redistributive	Recognition	Participative/Procedural	Restorative	Accommodative/Access
Thread 1: Elements of Justice	>allocation of benefits and burdens	>relational >asymmetrical >state mediates	>meaningful participation >access, information, and resources >accountability	>righting of historical wrongs via land, reparations, reconciliation	>not addressed
Thread 2: Disability Rights	>fair redistribution to address material disadvantages, including discrimination and extra costs	>ensuring dignity and diversity to combat violence, stereotypes, stigma	>creating and ensuring inclusion >meaningful participation through access, information, and resources >transparency	>not addressed	>making space for differences
Thread 3: Disability Justice	>unequal distribution within and across states because of capitalism, colonialism, patriarchy, ableism	>interdependence of all living systems and land >working to meet each other’s needs	>centring the leadership of those most affected >reflecting and redressing power inequities in participative practices	>recognising wholeness of people with disabilities >cross movement solidarity >decolonising practices	>recognising and creating space for human biodiversity to ensure our collective liberation
Transformative change with women and girls with disabilities	>care work as recipients and providers	>mutual aid and peer support >leadership by women with disabilities >recognition of those made invisible	>understand, from the experiences of those most affected, barriers and appropriate responses	>value the teachings of our bodies and experiences >use them as a critical guide and reference point >decolonise research and knowledge production practices	>image everyone as requiring justice, of deserving equity >ensure our collective liberation

Redistribution is understood in the Convention as addressing disadvantages that are evident and removing both direct and indirect discrimination based in disability, for example, in the “extreme poverty and destitution” especially of older women and children with disabilities (CRPD 2018, p. 16). Thus, to achieve redistributive justice states will need to transition away from segregated work environments, ensure people with disabilities are paid no less than minimum wage, ensure access to education and training, adopt measures to cover additional costs related to disability and take immediate steps to ensure those living in poverty have adequate food, clothing and housing, among other measures (CRPD 2018).

Recognition is addressed in ensuring the dignity and diversity of people with disabilities. The Committee notes the importance and prevalence of dignity in the CRPD. “The term “dignity” appears in the Convention more often than in any other United Nations human rights convention” (CRPD 2018, 2). The Committee notes, as does much of the academic literature (e.g. Stienstra 2020), that in the medical model of disability, which has dominated much thinking and writing about disability in the past century, “persons with disabilities are not recognised as rights holders but are instead “reduced” to their impairments. Under these models [individual and medical], discriminatory or differential treatment against and the exclusion of persons with disabilities is seen as the norm and is legitimised by a medically driven incapacity approach to disability” (CRPD 2018, 2).

Under the medical model, the impairments of people with disabilities were seen as grounds to restrict or deny rights. For example, people with intellectual disabilities and psychiatric disabilities have often been institutionalised against their will. People, and especially women, with intellectual disabilities have been unable to access justice because they are seen as not competent. They are often not permitted to make their own decisions, again because they are seen to be unable to do so. To ensure recognition and limit misrecognition, the Committee suggests states implement several measures including prohibiting forced corrective disability treatments, forced placements in institutions, protection from and prevention of all forms of violence, exploitation, and abuse, and replacing models of denial of legal capacity with supported decision-making (CRPD 2018, 12, 14).

The Committee also notes that to ensure recognition justice will require recognition of the intersectional and multiple discrimination that people with disabilities face including in accessing justice, education, work, among other areas. In addition, it requires recognising the diversity of people with disabilities, not simply based in their impairments or conditions, but also in the context of gender, age, and Indigenousness. This approach suggests a significant potential attention to experiences and knowledges of women and girls with disabilities.

The Committee explains participative or procedural justice as about ensuring the ability to participate in society and one’s community as well as being included in all aspects of life. These measures may involve creating inclusive workplaces or living settings. But participative equality as described by the Committee also requires processes that enable participation by diverse people with disabilities and are transparent. Under access to justice, for example, the Committee notes the actions include:

1. Delivery of information in an understandable and accessible manner;

2. Recognition and accommodation of diverse forms of communication;

3. Physical accessibility throughout all stages of the process;

4. Financial assistance (CRPD 2018, 13).

The 2018 Comment further suggests that implementing the Convention and ensuring disability rights will require knowledge and capacity-building programs developed and implemented “with the meaningful participation of persons with disabilities and organisations representing the diverse range of persons with disabilities” (CRPD 2018, 18). In this way, participative justice involves creating inclusive societies, ensuring inclusive processes, and having the resources and capacity to contribute meaningfully. With this recognition of diverse people with disabilities, there is greater potential for inclusion of women and girls with disabilities.

While the Committee’s discussion of distributive, recognition and participative justice helps to expand and extend our understandings of justice to address the situations of diverse people with disabilities, including girls and women with disabilities, it is important to note the silence of this Comment and the CRPD on restorative justice. This gap suggests the limited scope of thinking in disability rights about Indigenous Peoples with disabilities and more generally about the ways in which disability rights can be engaged in decolonising disability and rights. Several questions help to frame thinking about restorative justice and disability rights: To what extent do disability rights work for reconciliation and support the self-determination of Indigenous Peoples and Nations? How do the intersections of gender, disability and Indigenousness shape the experiences of Indigenous girls and women with disabilities? To what extent do disability rights processes create opportunities for decolonisation? The next section offers more discussion about how critical disability studies scholars address decolonisation and disability.

The CRPD Committee, in its 2018 Comment, also notes the foundational importance of “an accommodating dimension to make space for difference as a matter of human dignity” (2018, 3). This is where the interpretation of the CRPD begins to make a unique contribution to our thinking about justice. An earlier 2017 Comment from the same Committee suggests that accommodation can be a precondition to procedural/participative justice and may shape recognition justice since to participate may require accommodations including accessibility of built environment or communications, individualised support services, and respect and/or support for legal capacity (CRPD 2017).

While the Committee frames this as an accommodating dimension, I believe what they really mean is accessibility. As Hirschberg and Papadopoulos (2016) suggest, the CRPD differentiates between accommodation and accessibility. Accessibility in the Convention is identified as a structural element and required for living an independent life. It may be physical accessibility in space or technology, access to services or the labour market, or access to communities. Accommodation is identified as an instrument to ensure that individuals have access to equality or are treated equally. These accommodation measures are determined on a case-by-case basis. The two work together, Hirschberg and Papadopoulos argue, “to find a balance between inalienable human rights and ableist normativity” (2016, 13).

Tanya Titchkosky (2011) pushes us to think beyond accommodation and accessibility to access. She argues access is “a way to orient to, and even come to wonder about, who, what, where, and when we find ourselves to be in social space … Access not only needs to be sought out and fought for, legally secured, physically measured, and politically protected, it also needs to be understood – as a complex form of perception that organises socio-political relations between people in social space” (Titchkosky 2011, 3, 4). Thus, for Titchkosky disability is an exceptionally good way to understand access, and access is a part of justice, specifically that which makes participative, recognition and redistributive justice possible.

The disability rights literature helps to identify specific measures and practices for states to take to include people with disabilities in redistributive, recognition and participative justice. The inclusion of a focus by the CRPD committee on intersectional and multiple forms of discrimination opens the way for more attention to the rights and experiences of women and girls with disabilities. The interpretation of the CRPD by its expert committee, expanded by Titchkosky, also suggests that access must be understood as prior to the other elements of justice since access determines who is included and who belongs. Two notable gaps are evident in this literature – the lack of discussion of restorative justice and the work of decolonisation and any discussion of disability rights outside the state system. The literature discussed in the third thread, disability justice, helps to address these gaps.

Third thread: disability justice

Disability rights have come under significant criticism from several locations. Sins Invalid, a collection of queer, black, trans disability activists who have experienced marginalisation within and outside the disability movement, suggest: “At its core, the disability rights framework centers people who can achieve status, power and access through a legal or rights-based framework, which we know is not possible for many disabled people, or appropriate for all situations” (Sins Invalid 2019, 15).

Those in critical disability studies have also identified the state-centric approach evident in disability rights. Soldatic (2013) argues the CRPD has been built on an understanding of disability justice in the context of the modern territorial state that makes invisible claims against other states and international organisations. Disability rights in the CRPD also obscures those “disability injustices that are distinctly tied to northern state interventions through either development, aid, intervention or invasion” (Soldatic 2013, 747).

Multiple authors have demonstrated how transnational capitalism, colonial power, trade practices, and war and conflict have created and sustained impairments and disabilities (Meekosha and Soldatic 2011, Soldatic 2013, Kazemi 2019). The unrelenting drive for low-cost goods and clothing leads to unsafe factories in the global South (Mladenov 2016); the use of Agent Orange in the Vietnam/USA conflicts has had long-term implications (Ngo et al. 2013); and the colonial practices which justify resource extraction without consultation or benefits among Indigenous Peoples in Canada (Stienstra 2015) are all examples of this disabling political economic drive. Connell (2011) identifies the importance of understanding the embodied nature of these global social forces including capitalism, patriarchy and colonialism, and their role in the emergence of disabilities over time and through spaces. Part of this emergence is about whose knowledge is valued and recognised.

There is a growing body of literature from the global South, claiming knowledges and approaches to disabilities that challenge the hegemonic global Northern approach to disabilities and recognising the deeply embedded colonial and capitalist practices that sustain these inequities. For example, Nguyen (2018) argues for the importance of knowledge production from the global South that leads to identifying and engaging with “discursive and political practices that shape what might be called “radical vulnerabilities’ through contested colonial and post-colonial spaces.” (Nguyen and Stienstra 2021). Onazi develops an African approach to disability justice which “takes the value of community relationships and asymmetrical obligations as its core feature … When combined with the awareness of disabilities, community relationships and obligations, especially as I argue if they are understood asymmetrically, have the attractiveness of amplifying the consciousness of human mortality and vulnerability” (2020, 28). Gilroy et al. (2021) remind us of the ways in which colonisation and on-going colonial practices undermine Indigenous individual and community knowledges and identities. “It is the impact of settler-colonial labels and hierarchical binaries that create disability challenges, not the existence of differences” (2086). These critiques, however, keep gendered disability justice obscured in their analysis.

While the academic literature provides critiques of and identifies gaps in the existing system, the disability movement also offers some views on what is at the foundation of disability justice (Sins Invalid 2019, Piepzna-Samarasinha 2018). Sins Invalid suggests there are, for now, ten principles of disability justice. These include intersectionality; leadership of those most impacted; anti-capitalist politics; cross-movement solidarity; recognising wholeness; sustainability; commitment to cross-disability solidarity; interdependence; collective access; and collective liberation. These principles come from a collective based in the United States and reflect ways of naming that are based in that space and time.

Yet the principles also recognise transformative practices that are not evident in the first thread on elements of justice, nor the second thread on disability rights. For example, while discussions of intersectionality and leadership by people with disabilities are discussed in disability rights and the CRPD, an anti-capitalist politics as well as cross-movement solidarity are not apparent. Implicit in calls for intersectionality is recognition of non-binary understandings of gender, but that recognition is not fully developed or discussed in other principles of disability justice. The principles that call for wholeness and sustainability echo Indigenous ways of knowing about and addressing differences. The disability justice principles also emphasise ways forward, not only critiques of existing practices. Commitments to cross-disability solidarity, and recognition not only of the interdependence of humans, but also interdependence with the land and other species shift discussions of disability justice beyond what currently exists. Finally, the call for collective access and liberation begins to put flesh on the bones of the access dimension discussed in thread two on disability rights. “We create and explore ways of doing things that go beyond able-bodied and neurotypical norms. Access needs aren’t shameful – we all function differently depending on context and environment … We can share responsibility for our access needs, we can ask that our needs be met without compromising our integrity, we can balance autonomy while being in community, we can be unafraid of our vulnerabilities, knowing our strengths are respected” (Sins Invalid 2019, 26).

By reading the academic and community literatures on disability justice together, we receive a more wholistic approach to thinking about disability justice and how to bring it into diverse lived experiences around the globe, including those of girls and women with disabilities.

Threading disability justice and rights

A critical reading of these three threads suggests both key areas for addressing disability in our analysis of transnational and international relations as well as strategies to work for transformational change with and for women and girls with disabilities. Both are necessary to bring about transformative change and each of the three strands of discussions has something to offer in this threading.

Distributive justice in the first thread suggests that we consider the morally fair distribution of benefits and burdens. Disability rights widens that to examine fair redistribution to address socio-economic disadvantages. As Mladenov (2016) argues, this fair redistribution needs to be accompanied by the transformative strategy of decommodifying labour through a basic income approach. This could be one anti-capitalist strategy from the disability justice principles. How do we ensure that the lives of women and girls with disabilities are addressed in this strategy, and they do not become invisible yet again? Many of the redistributive mechanisms to address benefits and burdens have been developed without an intersectional analysis or practice.

But Piepzna-Samarasinha (2018) moves us even further to recognise the importance of going beyond thinking about individual benefits and burdens to understanding and supporting collective care. They argue care work is “the radical ways that we care for each other and that we fight to care for ourselves as disabled people, as disabled intersectional people” (Disability Visibility Podcast 2019). We cannot decommodify labour until we also recognise the care work that disabled people, and especially women with disabilities, are involved in as care recipients and care providers of ourselves, each other, other creatures, and the earth. This approach also challenges the ableist assumptions of productivity and independence at the heart of much of international relations.

The first thread reminds us that recognition justice is relational, asymmetrical and at times, threatening. Recognition justice seeks to value other people, groups, or way of being and knowing. The disability rights thread illustrates how for people with disabilities misrecognition and devaluation have come, in part, from the medical model of disability, and the importance of intersectional recognition of people with disabilities. Yet the disability rights thread remains an individual approach to recognition, linked with individual identities. It fails to recognise that there are community-oriented understandings of recognition like those based in ubuntu (Onazi 2020), or Indigenous approaches that value wholeness and inclusion (Gilroy et al. 2021). The disability justice principles also build out what interdependence means. “We see the liberation of all living systems and the land as integral to the liberation of our own communities, as we all share one planet. We work to meet each other’s needs as we build toward liberation, without always reaching for state solutions which inevitably extend state control further into our lives” (Sins Invalid 2019, 25).

For women and girls with disabilities this means looking for transformative solutions that encourage mutual aid and peer support. It means ensuring recognition of and for those girls and women with disabilities who have been made invisible because they are in institutional settings, have been labelled not competent or non-communicative, or have been removed from their homes and families by colonial practices. It means honouring the leadership of women and girls with disabilities within and beyond the women with disabilities movement. Each of these can be done through relations of global development.

Participative or procedural justice, in the first thread, requires that people need not only be able to participate meaningfully in decision-making with the necessary resources and information, but that they are also able to participate in the embedded power relations at work within and outside formal decision-making. The second thread on disability rights demonstrates what it takes for participative justice for disabled people. Fraser’s discussion of the “all-subjected principle” as those who are subjected to a governance system being able to claim justice under it is a useful extension of participative discussions beyond the state system. Fraser suggests that global governance systems are not restricted to states and “also comprise nonstate agencies that generate enforceable rules that structure important swaths of social interaction” (2008, 412). Participative justice then includes meaningful, accessible, and inclusive participation in transnational relations widely understood. The second thread on disability rights demonstrates this understanding of participating albeit on a national scale with its attention to participation in justice systems, labour markets and education.

What does this mean for girls and women with disabilities? With an intersectional analysis, we recognise that the barriers to participation may be different based in gender, global location, sexuality, and many other aspects. Transformative practices need to begin by understanding, from the experiences of those most affected, what barriers to participation exist and what might be appropriate responses to those barriers.

When we talk about ableism, racism, sexism & transmisogyny, colonization, police violence, etc., we are not looking to academics and experts to tell us what’s what – we are lifting up, listening to, reading, following, and highlighting the perspectives of those who are most impacted by the systems we fight against. By centering the leadership of those most impacted, we keep ourselves grounded in real-world problems and find creative strategies for resistance (Sins Invalid 2019, 23).

We also recognise that attempts to ensure deliberative engagement with affected communities can create the illusion of engagement and participation (Wiebe and Levac 2020). Thus, transformational practices need also be aware of the power relations at work and seek to redress these in participative practices.

Recognition of restorative justice is still emerging in theory and practice. It begins with the assumption that the lands on which many live were taken by others, and specifically by colonial and imperial actions in the past and that continue. Returning the land, paying recompense for the infliction of slavery and the removal of Indigenous children from their homes and communities are transformative actions. But these actions do not necessarily address the caring elements that must accompany return of lands or monetary responses and that Beckett and Keeling describe as “ongoing processes of trust building, reconciliation, and perpetual care for humans, animals and environments alike” (2019, 217). Restorative justice as discussed earlier fails to shift our attention beyond identifying disability and impairment as something to be fixed or prevented. It fails to recognise disability as part of the human biodiversity and people with disabilities as whole. Part of restorative justice is the work of sustainability that Sins Invalid identifies. “We learn to pace ourselves, individually and collectively, to be sustained long-term. We value the teachings of our bodies and experiences, and use them as a critical guide and reference point to help us move away from urgency and into a deep, slow, transformative, unstoppable wave of justice and liberation” (2019, 24–5).

For girls and women with disabilities restorative justice requires decolonising research and knowledge production practices (Nguyen and Stienstra 2021, Nguyen et al. 2019). It means engaging with Indigenous women, girls, and gender diverse people with disabilities in ways that create new spaces for learning and sharing. It means cross-movement solidarity and identifying the ways in which gendered colonial practices created, sustained, and maintained disability and impairments. It means engaging in anti-capitalist politics and recognition that “the nature of our disabled bodyminds means that we resist conforming to “normative” levels of productivity in a capitalist culture, and our labor is often invisible to a system that defines labor by able-bodied, white supremacist, gender normative standards. Our worth is not dependent on what and how much we can produce” (Sins Invalid 2019, 24).

As both Titchkosky and the Committee on the CRPD suggest, access is at the heart of justice. While the thread on disability rights identifies access as closely linked to accessibility and accommodation, Titchkosky’s call to see access as a “complex form of perception that organises socio-political relations between people in social space” (2011, 4) helps to clarify how what we understand as access shapes how we imagine justice. Access means imagining someone as requiring justice, of deserving equity. It means being able to understand that we are all part of the rich diversity of what it means to be human on this earth. It means collective liberation: “We move together as people with mixed abilities, multiracial, multi-gendered, mixed class, across the sexual spectrum, with a vision that leaves no bodymind behind” (Sins Invalid 2019, 26).

For women and girls with disabilities this is a transformative vision, where they/we are included, have the access we need, provide leadership, are sustained, resist policies and practices that reduce or diminish us/them, and work together in solidarity to create/recreate a tapestry filled with textures and beauty from our threadings.

Acknowledgements

My thinking for this article has been shaped by many discussions in the Engendering Disability-Inclusive Development/Genre, handicap et développement inclusif (EDID-GHDI) partnership. I want to thank my EDID-GHDI colleagues in civil society organisations, academic settings and governments for their insight, commitment, and passion in pursuing rights and justice for and with women and girls with disabilities. In addition, I am grateful to Valérie Grand’Maison, Kathryn Reinders, Susan Manning and the two anonymous referees for their thoughtful comments and encouragement.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada: [Grant Number Partnership Grant #895-2020-1015].

Notes on contributors

Deborah Stienstra

Deborah Stienstra holds the Jarislowsky Chair in Families and Work at the University of Guelph, where she is the Director of the Live Work Well Research Centre and Professor of Political Science. She is the author of About Canada: Disability Rights (Stienstra 2020). Her research and publications explore the intersections of disabilities, gender, childhood, and Indigenousness, identifying barriers to, as well as possibilities for, engagement and transformative change. Her work also contributes to comparative and trans/international research and theory related to intersectional disability rights and justice.

Notes

1 There have been significant and compelling critiques of justice as distribution approach (see for example Young 2011, 18–33), but I will not address them here since my purpose is to illustrate a variety of elements of justice.

2 In Fraser 2007 she refers to this as the “all-affected principle”.