A Portrayal of the Sexual and Reproductive Perceptions of Women with Disabilities Using An Overarching Critical Feminist Disability Lens

Abstract

This paper is developed from our study on sexual and reproductive rights of women with disability in Zimbabwe, The paper demonstrates how the social model, human rights-based and feminist approaches combine to come up with an overarching critical feminist disability studies lens (CFDSL) to guide studies on disability and feminism using sexual and reproductive rights of women with disabilities. The paper argues that gender and disability are not only complex, but very dynamic and fluid problems. They cannot be adequately investigated using the lens of one simple theory. Hence the need for theory triangulation to come up with some hybrid theory like CFDSL. From the perspectives of the CFDSL, therefore, this paper argues that women with disabilities are not any special case who should be simply pitied without access to human rights which are mandatory to every human being. They are different, but this difference does not imply denial of human rights, in this case sexual and reproductive rights.

Keywords: women, disability, theory, sex, framework, gender.

DOI: 10.7176/RHSS/9-18-03

Publication date:September 30^th 2019