Gender and disablity

As the reading covered there is often a tangled up dance between women and disability. Often just being a woman being considered disabled.  For employers it’s often just the idea that any second you could become pregnant disabling you, along with several other issues with this. I feel like Alicia’s presentation went over it slightly how we expect more out of men. For instance, someone gaining a disability, if they were a women we would be surprised to see them conquer that disability and find a way to work in a normal way.  However with men we actually seem to just expect it from men. And this made me start thinking about how I've seen this relate to even children.  Personal example, I have several siblings, my two younger siblings both have mental disabilities. These disabilities are different, but either way they both work to make it difficult for them to participate in the classroom and often leave them awkward in most social situations. My mother worked hard with the school system to make sure that both of my siblings got the help they needed.  But you were more likely to hear that working with the school to help my sister was significantly harder than for my brother. As well, they would often try to tell my mother that it wasn't possible for my sister to graduate from high school. However, the words would have not been spoken about my brother. This makes me wonder if even in the school system and with parenting there are different gender considerations for learning disabled children.

Joan Welch