ABSTRACT
When I agreed to write a brief summary of my literature search on the situation of Women and Disability within higher education, I realized that, first of all, I needed a clear definition of key terms, and in relation to these I had to decide whether to use the term ‘women with disabilities’ or ‘disabled women’. Disability can be seen in different ways by different people, and while non-disabled professionals tend to see it as an illness, a drama and a problem, others, like Hannaford (1985), French (1994) and Thomson (1994), view it as a’social construction’ (Thomson, 1994, p. 584), with society itself, in our case Western society, perceived as disabling. Subscribing to the latter view I have decided to refer to ‘disabled women’ and not ‘women with disabilities’, as it is impossible, in my opinion, to have something without owning, controlling and choosing it. It is, indeed, not disabled women, but society that owns those environments, controls and chooses those policies that disable them. Those women, therefore, are disabled by physical, legal and educational structures that are unsuitable to their situation. Hannaford (1985) has a powerful description of how disability was, in fact, imposed on her by other people’s changed perception of her, rather than by her accident.
