Originally published here.

The book by Asha Hans provides a comprehensive interpretation of disability as is evident from its title, Disability, Gender and the Trajectories of Power. It is indeed a fresh approach quite different from the usual works that focus on persons with disabilities and specifically, women with disabilities. It skillfully intersects three concepts: disability, gender and power. It highlights how each of these different concepts can traverse across and cast an irrefutable impact on each other. At the very outset, the author prepares the ground for the arguments to be addressed later by highlighting the inherent failure of feminist disability studies.

She points out to the primal failure of people not ascribing a universal recognition to femi-nism with disability as a full-fledged academic discourse. She strongly emphasises the need to shift the focus from highlighting the victimisation of women with disabilities to the need to accord recognition to women agencies. She calls for initiatives to delve deeper into understanding the discourse of feminist disability and proposes not only to incorporate but address core issues, both, as a part of feminist disability research, as well as feminist research, in general. She points out to the need for restrictive power which strongly advocates prevention of violence since in most cases violence is manifested in and through the power structure. The book also strongly advocates the need to create concrete awareness about the basic ethics of human relationships and rights, moral consciousness and social and civic responsibilities which can play a colossal role in eradicating any form of inequality and torture.

The author has portrayed accurately the undercurrents of denial of sexuality and sexual rights for women with disabilities. It is clearly evident through her work that projection of women with disabilities as asexual human beings essentially violates all human right norms wherein the emphasis on imperfection of the body not only condones denial of rights over their own bodies but legal-ises socially sanctioned abuses such as the denial of healthcare, marriage and motherhood, and forced sterilisation and hysterectomies. The book encompasses monographs by various eminent contributors all addressing pertinent problems associated with the doubly disadvantaged women with disabilities. They delve into myriad discourses commenting on disability in the context of political economy, gender and care.

They vehemently oppose the medical and psychological models which rationalises the problem as engrained within persons with disabilities themselves. Personal experiences, as endorsed by the social model, have ushered in a paradigm shift in conceptualising and analysing disability. Some of the contributors have vividly explored the diminishing relationship, between gender and disability in the context of sexuality, motherhood, gender, education, employment and culture. Based on the capabilities framework by Amartya Sen, one of the chapters highlights innumerable inequalities experienced by persons with disabilities. It emphasises the clearly inverse relationship between impairment and entitlements, and dire organisational aspects in the society and gender.

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