Resumen
Women with disabilities encounter a high risk of violence, especially in Canada. Canadians with disabilities are twice as likely to experience violent victimization as non-disabled people and face a wider range of emotional, physical, and sexual abuse. Yet, the lack of research attention focused on gender-based violence (GBV) and disability has contributed to the invisibility of the victimization of women with disabilities. This study aimed to provide a new and more comprehensive understanding of the lived experiences of GBV among disabled women to promote best practices by strengthening services and building community capacity. A qualitative meta-synthesis was carried out to examine and synthesize qualitative data exploring the experiences of GBV among disabled women. Forty-nine studies spanning over 45 countries met the inclusion criteria for this study. The findings suggest that GBV remains hidden behind a wall of silence despite its historical and cross-cultural prevalence. For disabled women, silence is an ongoing problem. Silence increases the difficulty in identifying GBV among disabled women and discourages women from seeking support and disclosing violence. Disabled women report that when they ask for help, there’s no one to help them. Moreover, many women describe how living with a disability significantly contributes to violence against them. Women report that being disabled aggravated the abuse they endured and limited their ability to escape or receive effective service responses. For instance, dependency and reliance on perpetrators shaped disabled women’s exposure to violence, prolonging a pattern of domestic abuse. GBV services must be accessible to disabled women. Disabled women report difficulty finding accessible services, as they sometimes encounter architectural and environmental barriers preventing them from accessing services, such as a lack of proper assistive technology, policies against service animals, and restrictions on children remaining in the facility. Additional policy and practice implications will be discussed.
Palabras Clave (separar con comas)
gender-based violence, disability, qualitative research, meta-synthesis, accessibility, domestic violence