In our society females with disabilities are identified with objects suffering from a double inequality structure of disability and women. The problems related to disabled women lie in social isolation and estrangement they experience under a complex ...
In our society females with disabilities are identified with objects suffering from a double inequality structure of disability and women. The problems related to disabled women lie in social isolation and estrangement they experience under a complex structure of discrimination rather than overall realms of life. Amongst all, this study focused on pregnancy, childbirth and parenting of women disabled in terms of their reality and effective measures of support.
The issue of females disabled is not limited to families but extends to national awareness to establish a national system of support. Unfortunately, the current situation lacks in studies on their realities and conditions as well as in institutional measures to meet their need for welfare service based on considerations over their special aspects. It is necessary to perceive actual conditions of discrimination the females disabled are faced with and related problems they suffer. In that sense, the present study focused on policy challenges for the improvement of their welfare and social countermeasures based on the necessity of social and welfare support measures for disabled women's pregnancy, childbirth and parenting. As the study methods, to seek a system for effective supports for disabled women's pregnancy, childbirth and parenting as well as their reality, theoretical backgrounds were considered regarding theories on discrimination against the female disabled, their maternity right and current facts of support policy, and for an interpretive research, a questionnaire survey and in-depth interviews were conducted. As for the order of approaches to the issue in this study, through a review on theoretical backgrounds and prior studies, the facts and actual conditions of the females disabled, support needs among them and institutional issues were derived primarily and policy measures for improvement were sought.
The objective of this study is to delve into the actual reality of pregnancy, childbirth and parenting of women with disabilities and to seek social welfare and policy measures for supporting effectively and practically the three aspects of their lives aforesaid. For the purpose of this study, married disabled women were selected to see the acceptance and prejudice of their families regarding their marriage, difficulties of pregnancy and childbirth, and actual conditions of parenting, support for child care, needs for parenting service, parenting stress and parenting satisfaction. As a result, the following conclusions were reached:
First, the disabled women studied were found to have difficulties primarily in economic aspects in general. Specifically, during pregnancy they have to live with the burden of expenses for hospital care. Likewise, at childbirth, they have to pay expenses related to giving birth, postpartum care, and child-care supplies. Besides, they need helping hands for rearing their children which will cost money, adding up to their financial difficulties. Therefore, it was found necessary to adopt a supplementary living allowance for pregnancy, childbirth and child care among the disabled women.
Second, although women with disabilities need helping by specialized medical staff with their pregnancy and childbirth, they are exposed to troubles due to lack of knowledge and understanding of disabilities among medical staff. In addition, given the lack of information on their pregnancy and childbirth, it was found necessary to bring in specialized medical staff and institutions to take care of overall aspects of married women with disabilities.
Third, the disabled women are supposed to cope with child care without helping hands, resulting in big difficulties. Lots of women with disabilities using assistant service currently supported are not satisfied and complain of inconvenience. As many things are insufficient in institutional dimensions, it was also found necessary to improve services already supported by making up for the weak points for the sake of practical help for the disabled women.
Fourth, women with disabilities want to share diverse information useful to daily lives. However, they have trouble collecting information. Owing to their limited scope of movement and discrimination in education, it is not easy for them to get to know information spread. To address this problem, it is necessary to develop a systematic approach to collect and provide information for them and to establish a self-help meeting for sharing experience of child care and organized supports.
The present study attempted to determine the actual conditions of the disabled women suffering from social bias and poverty and to present fundamental solutions. As lots of them live with social prejudice and their voices are hardly heard, data collection was difficult. Also, lots of them were not willing to cooperate for this study. Despite the limitation in the number of subjects, this study made efforts to deal with them based on disability types. Their difficulties here represent those of other majority of disabled people, resulting from the social reality at present. Further, the issue of the disabled women needs taking care of by the government rather than families. Especially, those troubles of pregnancy, childbirth and child care directly affecting the disabled women need paying attention to through governmental budgets for sufficient supports based on individual disability and the areas that need supporting.
Hopefully, awareness of the disabled women will be improved and viable policies, plans and practices will be developed through constant interest and efforts on a national scale.