Integrating Feminism, Transforming the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS): An Analysis of the Scheme Through the NDIS Plans of People with Intellectual Disability

Abstract

ABSTRACT The implications of gender inequality have been overlooked in the lives of women with intellectual disability who suffer intersectional discrimination because they are women but also because they have a disability. The individualised funding models used by the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) aims to advance human rights concerns, such as gender equality, by giving people the ability to decide how they are supported. Underpinning the strategy is that individuals have ‘choice and control’ over care under a market-based economy model as businesses create services to meet their needs. However, it is unclear to what extent the system recognises the needs of women with intellectual disability and the intersectional discrimination that they experience. The article presents research aimed at locating how the notions of choice, control and autonomy intersect with gender by examining 20 NDIS plans for men and women with intellectual disability. We use a feminist perspective to analyse how the complexities of power dynamics in the planning process, the subjugation of women in society, and epistemic knowledge creation are part of women with intellectual disabilities' experience of the NDIS. This article contributes to the feminist discourse and makes suggestions for improving the approach and policy of the NDIS.