“It Starts With the Littlest Things”: Young Disabled Women’s Experiences Navigating Everyday Ableism

Ableism permeates our everyday lives, our relationships, and our ways of thinking, talking, and doing through systemic devaluation of certain kinds of bodies and minds. It is deeply entwined with other forms of oppression and is at once structural, relational, and profoundly personal. Alongside histories of ableism, disability studies scholars and disability activists have documented parallel histories of disabled people’s creativity, survival, and resistance to ableism. Drawing together disability studies scholarship and activist perspectives on ableism, aspects of feminist theory, and concepts of “everyday resistance,” this research explores young disabled women’s lived experiences navigating ableism in everyday life. Data for this qualitative study were collected via 16 in-depth semi-structured interviews with young disabled women 18-30 years old and analyzed using an iterative thematic analysis approach. Highlighted throughout this research are stories about the daily contingencies of navigating shifting and power-laden terrains of everyday life for young disabled women, including the doctor’s office, the college classroom, the workplace, the family home, and more. Though enactments of ableism young women experienced in everyday life were sometimes subtle, the stories they shared about their experiences reflected larger socio-cultural power dynamics and were deeply felt and profoundly personal. Key themes discussed include experiences of disbelief and dismissal, infantilization, exclusion, and questioning that coalesce at the intersections of young adulthood, womanhood, and disability. This research also explores the range of strategies young disabled women use to contend with everyday ableism. For the women interviewed, navigating everyday ableism required a flexible repertoire of strategies, ranging from largely recognizable forms of self-advocacy to quiet moments of connection, epistemic resistance, demanding access, proving themselves, and just letting go. This research raises questions about the potentials and possibilities for understanding young disabled women’s everyday experiences and knowledges as sites of resistance, acquiescence, survival, and what exists in between.