Women's Parasport Experiences of Sacrifice, Conflict, and Control

Abstract

In this chapter, we engage with the stories of 12 Canadian athletes about their experiences of personal sacrifice, control, and conflict in women's Paralympic sport. Parasport is often lauded as a site of empowerment for athletes who experience disability. At the same time, stories, such as the ones presented here, run counter to the empowerment narrative. Furthermore, research exploring the experiences of women's parasport athletes has often emphasised the social construction of disability, not considering the ways in which the social construction of gender accounts for and compounds inequality and marginalisation of these athletes. Drawing on critical literature addressing empowerment in parasport and feminist disability studies, we centralise and analyse the stories of these athletes at the intersections of gender and disability in sport. We foreground the athletes’ stories with the hope they will contribute to dismantling power structures within parasport, thus making room for change.