Women with disabilities: Affirmative practice and assessment.

Abstract

Psychology has come to recognize that the effects of biases related to disabilities have been detrimental to the increasingly complex needs of women with disabilities (WWD). Currently, about 27 million women in the United States have disabilities, and the number is growing (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2013a). Definitions of disability have evolved and broadened over time and may include medical, legal, social, or political factors. For the purposes of this chapter, disability is defined broadly as a condition that creates impairments, activity limitations, and participation restrictions, independent of whether the condition is congenital, acquired, acute, or chronic in nature. Disability reflects the interaction between features of a person's body and features of the society in which he or she lives. The National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research's (NIDRR) "New Paradigm of Disability" emphasizes the interactions among a variety of factors in order to better illuminate the experience of people with disabilities (PWD; Pledger,

Feminist therapy and empowerment.

“…Gaining knowledge about values, experiences, practices, and frequent life issues of specific groups of women is also crucial to understanding diversity and complexity. For example, recent books on psychological practice with women clarify central issues, stereotypes, and challenges that are experienced by groups of women such as Latinas (Gloria & Castellanos, 2013;González, Castañeda-Sound, & Navarro, 2015), Asian American women (Le & Dinh, 2015;Suzuki, Ahluwalia, & Alimchandani, 2013), women with disabilities (Banks, Brown, Mona, & Ackerman, 2015), Black women (Speight, Isom, & Thomas, 2013;Williams, 2015), American Indian women (Peters, Straits, & Gauthier, 2015), and Muslim women (Mahmood, 2013). Within these groups of women, intersectionality and multiple identities related to class, national identity, family dynamics, and educational options are also present.…”