Women, disability, care: Good neighbours or uneasy bedfellows?

Abstract

Disabled activists and feminist thinkers both lay claim to ownership of `care'. To the disabled people's movement, care is a necessity on the road to equal rights and citizenship. To women, care relationships are premised in capitalist economic and family relationships and can be both oppressive, and, conversely, sources of personal identity claims. The two perspectives are different, and conflict. Oppositional claims are sited in practical resource giving decisions, and state resources have implications for the individuals concerned. Resource relationships between the state and individuals affect both practical help given and the location of the resourced group to the wider society. I argue that these claims are fundamentally oppositional and result in oppression. The relationship, when mediated by provision of care, inevitably becomes disempowering. Care provision is a function of a welfare state, and care policy will effectively empower one or other group. This oppressive dyad can be altered by fundamental re-assessment of disabled theorization and feminist action, carried through into state provision and reflecting feminist perspectives of ethical care.