Resisting invisibility in healthcare responses to gender-based violence: a content analysis

ABSTRACT

Women and girls with disabilities are located at the intersections of patriarchal, ableist, and other structures of oppression that produce specific and heightened vulnerabilities to gender-based violence (GBV). Public health practitioners widely recognise the role of the healthcare sector in addressing GBV, however the role of the healthcare sector in addressing GBV must be questioned given ongoing barriers to healthcare access for people with disabilities. Grounded in an intersectional framework, I conducted a summative content analysis of GBV healthcare interventions to examine whether and how disability and intersectionality are mobilised in public health understanding of, and strategies to, address GBV. By bringing visibility to the ways in which silences construct and sustain the invisibility of women with disabilities and other social structures, I argue that GBV healthcare responses not only fail to provide care for women with disabilities across social locations, but they also risk reproducing understandings that devalue their lives.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender-based violence
• disability
• interventions
• public health
• intersectionality

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to my peer and colleague Kathryn Currie Reinders, a fellow Ph.D student, for her critical reflections on this paper and to Dr. Marie-Pier Lemay for her kind guidance and encouragement. I also thank the reviewers for their constructive feedback: it helped me strengthen my argument and improve my analytical skills as a scholar.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 In my work, I include people with mental health issues, also called ‘Mad’, as having disabilities because many of them identify as such and although they sometimes form their own Mad communities, they are often also involved in disabled communities and promote Disability Justice.

2 While I recognise that the latter terms do not equate to disability, they can point to discourses around disability.