“I Consider Myself an Empowered Woman”: The Interaction of Sport, Gender and Disability in the Lives of Wheelchair Basketball Players

Abstract

This research, involving interviews with elite female wheelchair basketball players, explores how gender and disability intersect in the lives of these athletes. Interviews revealed the integral role athletic identity plays to offset the stigma of disability in their self-identities and in the complex relationships each has with social norms in regard to gender, disability, sport and the body. However, social institutions, including that of adapted sport, reinforce an ableist, sexist ideology that persistently marginalizes these athletes.