The representation of disabled women and recent disabled women-led media
Open accessAbstract
This is a Current Issue because media industries have recently made renewed efforts to address problems in representations of disability, including UK initiatives for disabled-led content in 2020/2021. Analysis of these new forms of work will be necessary to learn more for improving future representations. Since portrayals of disabled women have been disproportionately neglected in academic analysis of media, my focus is on ‘Hen Night’, an episode of the BBC’s Culture in Quarantine programme of work. I discuss this as an exemplar of disabled women’s representation. I argue that ‘Hen Night’, and other pieces written and performed by disabled people in recent collections provide valuable insights into how and why gendered dimensions of disability imagery and social relations in mainstream media can begin to be changed for the better, improving understanding of the forms of marginalisation disabled women continue to face in cultural industries and gendered forms of representation.
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Media portrayals of people with disabilities have historically been absent, stereotyped, harmful or inaccurate rather than reflecting authentic, lived experiences.
“Yet, media portrayals of PwD have historically been absent, stereotyped, harmful or inaccurate rather than reflecting authentic, lived experiences [34, 49, 88, 114, 117].”
From Engaging Communities Meaningfully in Defining Disability Representation for AI Image Generation (2026) · cites this paper as [117]
The Introduction says disabled women were noticeably absent from screens and other media less than three decades ago, and describes a television programme that gave them visibility while promoting dubious ideas about them. It also discusses the limited influence disabled people have over media stories. These passages support concerns about absence and portrayals, but focus chiefly on disabled women rather than establishing the full claim about all people with disabilities or characterizing portrayals generally as harmful or inaccurate. (LLM, conf=0.85)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredVisual media plays a significant role in shaping public opinion and social norms, including societal perceptions of disability.
“Visual media plays a significant role in shaping public opinion and social norms, including societal perceptions of disability [10, 34, 105, 117].”
From Engaging Communities Meaningfully in Defining Disability Representation for AI Image Generation (2026) · cites this paper as [117]
Unlike other forms of marginalization (e.g., gender, race), disability representation has yet to be publicly debated or defined.
“Unlike other forms of marginalization (e.g., gender, race), disability representation has yet to be publicly debated or defined (cf. evolving work by [103, 117]).”
From Engaging Communities Meaningfully in Defining Disability Representation for AI Image Generation (2026) · cites this paper as [117]
The Abstract says portrayals of disabled women have been disproportionately neglected in academic analysis, and the Introduction discusses their changing screen presence. Neither section establishes that disability representation has yet to be publicly debated or defined, or compares that debate with gender and race; searches for those points found no supporting passage in our copy. (LLM, conf=0.72)
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Research works printed but not linked: 6
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- Morris, Jenny. 1991. Pride against Prejudice: transforming Attitudes to Disability. london: Women's Press.
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- Wilde, Alison. 2018. "Troubling Images: The Re-Presentation of Disabled womanhood- Britain's Missing Top Model." The Journal of Popular Television 6 (1): 41-58. doi:10.1386/ jptv.6.1.41_1. · DOI
- Wilde, Alison. 2020. "Disabled People on Film and Television. " The International Encyclopedia of Gender, Media, and Communication, edited by Karen Ross, Ingrid Bachmann, Valentina Cardo, and Cosima Marco Scarcelli. Wiley-Blackwell. doi:10.1002/9781119429128.ieg- mc142. · DOI
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Engaging Communities Meaningfully in Defining Disability Representation for AI Image Generation
Thieme, A., Faia Marques, R., Grayson, M., Balachandar, S., Tyler Cassidy, C., Choksi, M. Z., Longden, C., Huda, R. S., Ileve Kalovwe, N., Mallon, C., et al. (2026) · Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems · doi:10.1145/3772318.3790768 · Cited by 1 · see citing works
“Visual media plays a significant role in shaping public opinion and social norms, including societal perceptions of disability [10, 34, 105, 117].”
- Authors
- Wilde, A.
- Affiliations
- The Open University (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Wilde, Alison
- ORCID
- Wilde, Alison
- Venue
- Disability & Society
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2022-02-04
- Volume
- 37
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 522-527
- ISSN
- 0267-4645 (ISSN-L)
- 0968-7599
- 1360-0508
- OpenAlex
- W4210315186
- Cited by
- 11
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 5
- FWCI
- 2.32
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- other-oa
- Locations
- Disability & Society (publishedVersion, other-oa)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Disability Rights and Representation
- Social Sciences › Gender Studies › Gender, Feminism, and Media
- Social Sciences › Gender Studies › Media, Gender, and Advertising
- Keywords
- women with disabilities, media representation of disability, gender and disability, marginalization, cultural industries, disability stereotypes
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