This paper analyses how disability informs and complicates gender identity for women with disabilities and demonstrates that disability is a feminist issue. The first section underscores the dual silence of women with disabilities who remain largely unheard of both in feminist literature and in the disability rights movement. The status of women with disabilities in the United States reflects their position as an oppressed group in terms of educational opportunity, rehabilitation and vocational program access, occupational attainment, economic status, and social outlets. The second section of this paper suggests possible points of entry into several debates within feminist literature that would be broadened or transformed by a disability perspective. Issues of reproductive rights, control of women's bodies, newborn's right to treatment, the construction of gender as informed by disability, and sexual representations are among the issues analyzed. Finally, the last section of this paper analyzes various strategies for change, including standpoint or minority models and strategies within feminist thought that may be useful or emancipatory for women with disabilities. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd.
