HOW A NEGATIVE VIEW-POINT OF MOTHERHOOD AND NURTURANCE POSE AS AN OBSTACLES TO EQUALITY FOR WOMEN WITH DISABILITIES-WWDs

Traditionally, the woman is looked at as a sole caretaker in the family and society at large, this is slowly changing. But the society still uses the traditional way to ensure this. And the disabled women are in most cases seen to be so dependent and needy and hence they are not seen able to be good mothers and wives to give care and nurture.

The society has a mind set that they have attached to the women with disabilities, they have an imagination that disabled women cannot and should not have children, this has a lot of negative impacts on the lives of the disabled women, it has caused so many disabled women who happen to get pregnant to shy away from seeking medical care hence bring along risks related to pregnancy and child birth. It is even very sad that even the doctors are seen to have the same societal thinking towards and about the disabled women.

Disabled women find it hard to access information and services needed for their special needs. When it comes time for a disabled woman to become a mother, this is a very challenging moment; this is because the society has a fixed mind that the disabled woman is not fit to be a mother. They think that the disability makes it unfit for them. When divorce happens to a marriage involving a disabled woman, the child may be taken away from them; the child at times is taken by the social agencies not putting in consideration the fact that despite their disability, they have a right to parenthood.

Disabled women have experienced challenges in almost any attempt to be mothers, whether by adoption or even biological mothers. And for those who manage to keep their children, they face challenges with the childhood programmes that have no provision for disabled mothers. Most of the successful disabled mothers are seen to be disabled women who have some form of extra economic powers. And mothers with mental disabilities face the worst of the experiences in this case. These are the invisible mothers with disabilities whose experiences have not been brought to light in any case.

The society attaches their negative attitudes towards the disabled women on baseless grounds like the speculation that the disabled women will give birth to disabled children. This kind of of stigmatization has brought double discrimination generally to disabled women and specifically to women with mental disabilities.

The society has a bad attitude towards the mental disability, they call them the feeble minded people, they were never allowed to have children, these women were said to be sexually loose and thus everything possible was done to ensure that they don’t get children. They were believed to be capable of giving birth to illigimate children. In response to this, the society did anything they could to ensure that they don’t get children and this included forced sterilization. They even were prevented from getting married, and this shows how the disabled women with mental disabilities are greatly discriminated against.