Slow Progress for Women with Disabilities in India

Abstract

This essay examines the engendering of disability in India over the past half a century through a reflexive lens; the author has been both an observer and participant in this process. The article looks at how women with disabilities have emerged as a distinct category in the different registers of state, civil society, and academia, in the face of overwhelming odds as individuals and invisibility as a group. It also discusses how notions of human rights and empowerment play out in the entangled web of state discourses, routine practices, and everyday lived experiences.