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Women with disabilities: from discrimination and violence towards an ethics of reciprocity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2016

Rita Barbuto  and
Emilia Napolitano
Rita Barbuto*
Affiliation:
Disabled People's International Italia, Lamezia Terme (Catanzaro)
Emilia Napolitano*
Affiliation:
Disabled People's International Italia, Lamezia Terme (Catanzaro)
*
∗Corresponding author. Emails: rita@dpitalia.org
∗emiliananapolitano@alice.it
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Abstract

Since 2001 DPI Italia, the Italian section of Disabled People's International, has played an important role in a series of research projects in the European Commission's Daphne Programme on violence against women with disabilities. Several different types of violence have been identified, from sexual abuse to removal of women's control over their environment to invasion of their privacy in healthcare contexts to control of their reproductive capacity, particularly of women with intellectual disabilities. In the light of these projects, and of the CRPD's recognition of the multiple discriminations experienced by many women with disabilities, the article argues for a shift away from an ethics of care and dependency towards one of equal reciprocal relations between disabled women and others and to a bioethics grounded not in exceptional need but in everyday life. Peer counselling among disabled women is particularly important in effecting this shift.

Keywords

womendisabilitysexualitymultiple discriminationpeer counselling
Type
Articles
Information
Modern Italy , Volume 19 , Issue 2: Disability rights and wrongs in Italy , May 2014 , pp. 161 - 168
Copyright
Copyright © Association for the study of Modern Italy 

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