Are we there yet? Progress or persisting barriers in the social representations of disabled women in Malta

Abstract

The shared ideas and narratives circulating in every-day discourse reveal whether discrimination and exclusion of disabled women is being challenged or whether it is continuing to shape disabled women’s lives. In this paper I present nine social representations of disabled women and discuss whether these show if any progress has been made in the past 25 years in the ways that disabled women are perceived. Data was gathered through a mixed-method approach. The findings show that the way disabled women view themselves are very different from the way non-disabled people view them. Disabled women in Malta have become more rights-oriented and more resilient in the face of disabling obstacles. However, the majority of the social representations that have emerged show that disabled women in Malta are still encountering barriers in the way that they are perceived. These representations continue to contribute to the reproduction of systemic inequalities experienced by disabled women.