POLITICISING DISABILITY: Women with Intellectual Disabilities Negotiating the National Disability Insurance Scheme

Abstract

This thesis draws on intersectionality and embodiment to present a feminist inquiry into the experience of women with intellectual disabilities in the NDIS. The thesis and project centre on the question: What are the experiences of women with intellectual disabilities in the NDIS? I locate concepts of disability – be this historical, social, or cultural - in the views of those with jurisdiction over the Scheme, such as legislators, advocates and the women themselves.

My project entails deconstructing experience by adopting intersectionality and embodiment. Intersectionality is understood here as a theoretical perspective that looks at power relations to centre the perspectives of those ‘marginalised’. Embodiment describes the relationships between systems and those that use them, centring on the body to move away from the mind. My enquiry, then, is strongly influenced by the approach of feminists, but I counter their indifference to intellectual disabilities by considering insights from feminist disability scholars.

The primary method of investigation has been through mixed methods that contrast the voices of people with intellectual disability with more abstract representations of these groups in policy, reports and NDIS plans. The findings reveal that legislators saw gender in narrow terms, failing to understand interconnections to broader structural barriers. Advocacy groups focus on bodily autonomy and the state's role in regulating gender. In contrast, the NDIS plans and the photovoice highlight that women and men were concerned with community, discrimination, socialising and planning issues. Themes within these narratives spoke to complex problems of identity, power, subjugation and exclusion. The findings propose that disability support systems must address gender with other aspects of identity. Disability and gender are constantly in dialogue, and I have suggested the requirement to conceptualising disability in the NDIS in alternative ways.