Disability, Gender and Violence over the Life Course

Global Perspectives and Human Rights Approaches

Sonali Shah, Caroline Bradbury-Jones, Sonali Shah, Caroline Bradbury-Jones

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781351619097
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Work
• Index: Social Sciences

This is the first book to explore the interplay of disability, gender and violence over the life course from researcher, practitioner and survivor perspectives. It gives due weight to the accounts of disabled children and adults who have survived institutional or individual violence, evidencing barriers to recognition, disclosure and reporting.

Written by disabled and non-disabled women from around the world, Disability, Gender and Violence over the Life Course addresses the dearth of voices and experiences of disabled women and girls in empirical research, policy and practice on issues of violence, victimisation, protection, support and prevention. Divided into three parts – Childhood, Adulthood and Older Life – this collection offers diverse perspectives on the intersectionality of disability, age, ethnicity, sexuality and violence that have hitherto been absent.

This book will be an invaluable resource for students and practitioners of multiple fields of practice and academic studies, including health and social care, nursing, social work, childhood studies, gender studies, disability studies, safeguarding and child protection, equality and human rights, sociology and criminology.

Part 1

Childhood

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Chapter 1

Indigenous mothering and disabled children in regional Australia

A narrative study

Karen Soldatic

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Introduction

Examining the role of family violence in the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians is a contested area of research. The term ‘family violence’ is used in this chapter rather than ‘domestic violence’ or ‘intimate partner violence’ (Walsh et al. 2015). As Wilson et al. (2017) discuss, family violence offers a much broader framework in which to understand gendered patterns of violence in the lives of Indigenous women and their children, as it acknowledges the broader familial and kinship networks of Indigenous society and the ways in which settler colonial violence has led to the destruction of culture and family breakdown.

It is well recognised within the research that 200 years of European invasion and colonial settlement have resulted in a significantly higher prevalence of disability among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians (Hollinsworth 2013; Gilroy and Emerson 2016). As Walter and Saggers (2007) point out, across all indicators of social exclusion, deprivation and poverty, Indigenous Australians are by far the most disadvantaged group in Australia. Inequality for Indigenous Australians entails more than economic exclusion, encompassing broader indicators associated with familial connection, community participation and cultural wellbeing (Walter 2016). It also translates into very high rates of disability throughout the life course (Australian Bureau of Statistic (ABS) 2012; Gilroy and Emerson 2016). These high rates of disability are only likely to compound the structural position of absolute poverty for Indigenous Australians, as disability and poverty are closely related in Australia (see Soldatic and Sykes 2017). These national statistics strongly suggest the importance of disability supports and services for Indigenous Australians living with disability, and that disability will often be present in some way when considering family violence (Dowse et al. 2013).

Family violence in Indigenous Australia also needs to be considered in the historical context of settler colonial governance with European invasion. Settler colonial governance involved a range of highly gendered practices as the control of Indigenous women’s bodies, sexuality and reproduction was seen as a central component of settler expansion (Atkinson 1990; Brock 1995). Such processes, as Atkinson (1990) illustrates, have led to the destruction of Indigenous culture and the breakdown of family, kinship and community.

In Australia, much like Canada and the USA, the policy of forced child removal required the manufacturing of a racialised discourse about Indigenous mothers and their practices of mothering and care to justify the severing of the intimate maternal connection (Swift 1995). As Cutcher and Milroy (2010: 156) discuss, ‘Aboriginal women were constructed as ‘promiscuous’ and ‘nomads’ and it was largely assumed by white Australia that notions of family and motherhood were tenuous and short-lived for Aboriginal women’. Indigenous mothers as ‘bad mothers’ guilty of neglecting their mothering responsibilities to their children remains a dominant public narrative in many settler societies (see Lake 1992), and such ascriptions become heightened in public discussions surrounding maternal payments and entitlements (see Cutcher and Milroy 2010). Despite national recognition of the intergenerational trauma caused by these longstanding policies, today Indigenous mothers endure the highest rates of child removal (Australian Institute of Family Studies 2016; see also Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission 1997). For Indigenous women, the experience of family violence is embedded in these historical practices of violent settler colonial expansion, and it often shapes their decision-making in relation to remaining in violent relationships and households (Atkinson 1990).

Given this historical context, it should not be surprising that mothering a disabled child is particularly fraught for Indigenous mothers as they navigate disability service and healthcare systems for their children (Salmon 2011). Highly racialised, moralising codes often lay the blame for their child’s impairments on the mother’s own behaviour, rather than recognising the impact of intergenerational trauma and poverty caused by settler colonial invasion (Salmon 2011). As Canadian researcher Amy Salmon (2011) has documented, Indigenous mothers of disabled children walk a tightrope between enduring further racialised stigmatisation of being a ‘bad mother’ and securing a disability diagnosis so that their child can receive the supports and services they require for a life of flourishing and opportunity. Reporting family violence in this context can often undermine their efforts to shore up resources and supports for their disabled child (Hedwig 2013). These daily complex negotiations of racialised tensions create additional strains and tensions for Indigenous mothers. Yet, as Salmon suggests, the experience of childhood disability for Indigenous mothers is often a paradox; it can be both enabling and disabling. Salmon’s (2007, 2011) work in the Canadian context has shown that, in some instances, engagement with the disability service system enables Indigenous mothers a deeper understanding of the needs of their disabled child. Salmon also suggests that for many Indigenous mothers of disabled children, the disability service system often enables access to vital supports for their own mothering through contact with disability advocates who work alongside them to advance their rights.

Appropriate distribution of disability supports and services is a significant issue for Indigenous mothers and their disabled children. The distribution of disability supports and services across Australia is very uneven; there are marked distinctions between rural and remote towns, regional centres and large cities (Soldatic 2017). While the vast majority of the Australian disabled population reside in urban areas where there is a higher distribution and availability of specialist support and services (Productivity Commission 2011), there is a higher incidence of disability in regional areas as a proportion of the population (ABS 2015). In regional and outer regional areas, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population with disabilities is 1.6 times that of non-Indigenous Australians with disabilities (ABS 2015). Therefore, we need to consider issues of space and place (Habibis and Walter 2015), and the ways in which this lack of disability service provision outside of large urban centres may, in fact, create unique vulnerabilities in relation to family violence for Indigenous mothers and their disabled children. All this research suggests that in order to fully understand the real issues of family violence for Indigenous mothers and their disabled children we need to begin to distil the intersectional interplay of Indigeneity, disability, poverty and location in settler colonial Australia.

Methodology: the telling of Indigenous women’s stories

This chapter draws upon Indigenous narrative history methodologies to illustrate the significant issues faced by Aboriginal mothers and their disabled children living in a white racist society (Smith 1999). This entails positioning the lives of Indigenous people through their own rich narratives, through research processes that are inclusive and authentic in their dialogue (Smith 1999). Such a methodological approach is grounded in an ethical orientation committed to the redistribution of social power within the western scientific academy (Gilroy and Emerson 2016) and situated within knowledge production strategies that aim to decolonise Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing. Indigenous narratives, particularly those of Indigenous women, can be transformative through the oral re-enactment of past injustices, giving clarity to their current meaning and impact (Martin 2008).

The research reported in this chapter undertakes such an approach through presenting the life narrative of an Aboriginal mother and her disabled child and their experiences of family violence. This iterative process entails the non-Indigenous researcher first ‘knock’ and then wait to be invited to enter (Martin 2008). The life narrative is Tracy’s retelling of her journey of being an Indigenous mother of a child with a congenital impairment, forced to move from a small regional town to a large urban centre and back again. Tracy told her story to me (the author) over a period of 6 years from our first meeting (November 2011) as part of a broader national research project on Disability in Rural Australia (DP110102719), and subsequent research projects (Centre for Social Impact 2015, and ARC DECRA Fellowship 2016–2019). When we first met in the small town at the top end of Western Australia, Tracy had recently returned to this regional community after being forced to move to the state capital city (Perth), more than 2,400 kilometres away, as primary maternal health services for women thought to be carrying a child with a severe congenital impairment were not available in the regional town.

Issues of trust, respect and unequal power relations are always at the forefront of research that involves a non-Indigenous researcher and an Indigenous research participant (Johnson et al. 2007). Tracy and I were introduced by the local disability advocacy service where Tracy first sought support for her son and issues of family violence. Contact with Tracy has always been facilitated by the local disability advocate who has supported Tracy over these years. The interviews have therefore involved the disability advocate, too, who at times would offer points of clarification on some key issues, yet the story is Tracy’s own. Such a process, as Indigenous scholar Karin Martin (2008) suggests, is critical to ensure that Indigenous women’s ways of knowing, being and doing the research are transformative for Indigenous women; that is, through the process of telling and retelling their stories, they are able to reflexively engage with their own past to distil understanding, meaning and impact.

Tracy and I have conducted an open-ended in-depth dialogue over 6 years about her experiences being an Aboriginal mother of a disabled child and the life story presented here is the outcome of three core interviews over this period. Tracy agreed to this longstanding research relationship as she feels:

Yeah, every bit – like me tellin’ my story helps someone else as well. ‘Cause I know I’m not the only one and there’s probably someone that’s going through the same as me or probably worse.

Tracy’s life narrative is presented under section headings based on the relocations she has had to make from the rural to urban and back to a rural town in order to access disability and healthcare services and to make herself and her children safe from violence.

Findings: Tracy’s story

Birthing disability: racism, prenatal care and rurality

When I was pregnant with little Adrian [pseudonym] I’d been up here for 8 years already, so we’d moved back to Perth, y’see. But only because they didn’t have any of the resources or facilities or anything here to help him when he was born.

Is it 21 or 22 weeks or something? Yeah, I’d missed that and it wasn’t by my fault, I actually asked, I requested for an ultrasound at 22 weeks. And the doctor that was there at the time said ‘no, you don’t need one’ and I said ‘well, I think I should have one’ and he said no. Basically made me feel guilty and said ‘look, they cost money you know. Every time you have a scan that costs money’. I was like okay, so I didn’t bother going back. And I didn’t find out till the new doctor, my own doctor had come back ’cause she’d been out of town.

And she’d been away for about 3 months and this old guy he was there, so he basically made me feel guilty and I didn’t feel like, I didn’t want to go back. I waited till she got back and by that time I was almost due. She said ‘I really need you to do a scan because you missed the 22 weeks’. I said ‘I didn’t miss it, I came here and the doctor didn’t make an appointment’. She said ‘what?’ Okay, so anyway we do...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures and tables
• Notes on contributors
• Introduction: the context of the book
• Part 1 Childhood
• Part 2 Adulthood
• Part 3 Older life
• Conclusion: reflections of the editors
• Index