Abstract
Abstract The issue of (re)constructing one's self‐identity is an important, sociologically relevant issue of today. Qualitative interviews with women with learning difficulties have been done in order to further the understanding of the meaning of gender and disability, and what this means with regard to one's sense of self. Based on the lives realities of the participants, the analysis concludes that the social background and present situation of the elderly women make it difficult for these to have some control in their everyday lives. Among the participants, there are those who have an ambivalent approach to, and indeed oppose, the ascribed identity as learning disabled. This way of striving to reconstruct one's identity can be understood as a means of rejecting the oppressive situation of being rendered invisible and at the same time marked out as different, i.e. as a means of empowerment.
Highlights
There has during the last decade been an increasing interest in the social meaning of gender and disability, and some studies have focused on the subordinate social position of disabled women (e.g. Morris, 1991; Hillyer, 1993; Barron, 1997; Traustadottir, 1999; Kristiansen, 2000)
This paper focuses on the forming orconstructing of an identity of those labelled as women with learning difficulties
The two intertwined social roles, which this study explores, are the one of being a woman and of being disabled
Summary
There has during the last decade been an increasing interest in the social meaning of gender and disability, and some studies have focused on the subordinate social position of disabled women (e.g. Morris, 1991; Hillyer, 1993; Barron, 1997; Traustadottir, 1999; Kristiansen, 2000). A gender-neutral approach in research risks re-enforcing the invisibility of disabled women, as of disabled men. A group of women which can be described as invisible are women with learning difficulties These women are not acknowledged (nor are women with other kinds of impairments) when issues concerning women are discussed in media or in public debate, nor in feminist research generally. This invisibility serves to strengthen the understanding, or reinforce the myth, of women with learning difficulties as helpless and weak which is an ideo-
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