Forgotten Voices: Women with Disabilities and the AIDS Pandemic

By Myroslava Tataryn
November 14, 2008

“I would say that the most pervasive stereotype encountered by women with disabilities is a denial of our sexuality: that idea that because we are disabled, we do not or should not express our sexuality."  Myroslava Tataryn, our advisor on disability and AIDS, spoke at the AWID forum on how this prejudiced notion increases disabled women's vulnerability to HIV/AIDS, and decreases their access to reproductive and sexual health care.

In 2002, I traveled to Ghana in West Africa to take part in a study abroad program in Development Studies. It was my first time living outside Canada and my first encounter with the international disability movement.  I spent much of my time that year at a Resource Center for Persons with Disabilities.  Probably the most common question posed to me during this time was, “Is it also difficult for you people to find husbands in your place, because for us here, as 'disabled' it is very difficult.”  Since then, I have been asked the same question again and again throughout South Africa, Kenya and Uganda.  I hear women’s stories of being compelled to endure unstable, often abusive serial relationships because marriage to a disabled woman is simply not considered acceptable in their community.  I think back to Canada and I wonder if the only difference is that there is less of an emphasis on marriage in Canadian society.  It seems that many women with disabilities worldwide face common barriers when seeking a committed partner…or even when presuming to be judged worthy of a 'good husband' or relationship.  In denying our sexuality, the stereotype of disabled women’s asexuality denies our very humanity and tolerates treatment — rape, forced sterilization, abusive marriage — that would never be considered acceptable for non-disabled women or men.

I would like to emphasize that our struggles in terms of reproductive and sexual rights diverge significantly from those of the “mainstream” women’s movement.  This is particularly evident regarding the issue of “Choice.”  As much as the “mainstream” women’s movement has been fighting for abortion rights, women with disabilities are still fighting for the right to make our own reproductive choices.  We must speak out against the coerced sterilization and abortion of our pregnancies.  And we must continually fight to assert our right to choose to have and keep our children.

A report by an Equity Committee on Midwifery in Canada cites many examples of negative and stereotypical attitudes displayed by health care professionals towards the reproductive rights of women with disabilities.  A woman without an arm was asked on the maternity ward, “How are you going to raise that baby?”  A woman with polio, when learning from her doctor that she was pregnant, was told at the same time that she had been booked for an abortion.  Alienation caused by comments like these can discourage women with disabilities from accessing prenatal care.

Such negative stereotypes arise from prevailing attitudes that devalue the humanity of certain women by stigmatizing their differences as defective.  By controlling and denying the sexuality of women with disabilities, society tells us we are not welcome.  The widespread and growing demand for prenatal diagnostic techniques is also indicative of this attitude.