Washington, D.C., March 13 – As we celebrate Women’s History Month, RespectAbility recognizes the contributions made and the important presence of women to the United States. It is important to note this includes more than 20.9 million women living with a disability in the U.S., more than 10.2 million of which are working-age (18-64). Therefore, we would like to reflect on the realities and challenges that continue to shape the lives of women with disabilities.

Only 34.6 percent of working-age women with disabilities (3.5 million) are employed in the U.S. compared to 82.5 percent of working-age women without disabilities. This is in line with the rest of the country. With fully one-in-four American adults having a disability, just 37 percent of those who are working-age are employed, despite polls showing that most of them want to work. This leads to approximately 22.6 percent of women with disabilities living in poverty compared to 14.7 percent of women without disabilities. [continue reading…]

Honoring Women with Disabilities During Women’s History Month

Harriet Tubman

Harriet Tubman is known as one of the most influential leaders of our nation. She was a former slave turned abolitionist who bravely risked her life to free both slaves and her own family members through the underground railroad.

Tubman was a Maryland native. She was born around 1820 in Dorchester, County, Md. Her mission was getting as many men, women and children out of bondage into freedom.

When Tubman was a teenager, she acquired a traumatic brain injury when a slave owner struck her in the head. This resulted in her developing epileptic seizures and hypersomnia. Unfortunately, Tubman’s experience of violence occurred on a daily basis which made her brain injury worse.

“I had crossed the line. I was free; but there was no one to welcome me to the land of freedom. I was a stranger in a strange land,” she often is quoted as saying. [continue reading…]

Honoring Women with Disabilities During Women’s History Month

Cristina Sanz

Fans of the hit A&E docu-series Born this Way know Cristina Sanz as a lovable, fun and family-oriented dancer and romantic. In 2016, Sanz became the first Hispanic woman with a disability as part of an ensemble cast to be on an Emmy award-winning show. In 2018, she shattered stigmas by getting married to her longtime fiancé Angel Callahan.

The two already had been dating for five years before the show premiered. Their desire to live an independent life together – and get married – was a consistent plot line throughout the show. The first season ended with their engagement; the fourth season finale was an hour-long episode featuring the wedding between these two individuals with developmental disabilities.

“I wanted to show everyone that you can have a disability and get married,” Sanz told People magazine.

Her wedding, moving out on her own and working at two jobs, are things her parents never imagined as Cristina was growing up.

“I will not wake up waiting for my daughter to come back from a date like my mother did for me,” her mother, Beatriz Sanz, said she used to think. But, Sanz was the first of her siblings to get married. [continue reading…]

Cori Ashkenazy

Cori Ashkenazy was only two-and-a-half-years-old when he and his family made Aliyah, making Israel their new home. But it was only after their arrival to Israel that his parents became aware that their son was “different” than other kids his age: after a battery of tests and evaluations, Cori was diagnosed with autism.

Undiscouraged, Cori’s family invested boundless energy and means to facilitate and support his development and personal advancement. He met regularly with a speech therapist and physiotherapist, who assigned him daily drills and activities to strengthen his hypotonic muscles. To aid in his physical development, any time a new form of therapy was “discovered” or announced, Cori was immediately there to try it, including horseback riding therapy. Overtime, with dedication and patience, Cori overcame his hypotonia.

The joy of conquering and overcoming hypotonia was one thing, but it was the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) draft letter—the same every 17 or 18-year-old Israeli teenager receives—that really sparked Cori’s excitement. On the morning of his induction and draft into the IDF, Cori’s joy turned into disappointment: the recruiting officer monotonously told him and his parents that Cori was exempt from military service due to his autism. [continue reading…]

Honoring Women with Disabilities During Women’s History Month

Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo, a Mexican woman who had multiple disabilities including polio as a child and spinal and pelvis damage from a car accident, became a world-renowned self-portrait painter. She has since served as a role model for generations of artists, people with disabilities and bisexual women.

At the age of six, Kahlo was bedridden with polio. The polio virus caused damage to her right leg and foot. She was left with a limp. Her father thought that playing soccer, wrestling and swimming would help her recover.

As a teenager, she was in a car accident. A steel handrail was impaled into her hip and came out the other side. Her spine and pelvis were damaged significantly. While in recovery, she began to paint. [continue reading…]

Honoring Women with Disabilities During Women’s History Month

Selena Gomez

Three years ago, pop star and actress Selena Gomez strutted onto Ellen DeGeneres stage wearing a black floor-length dress and heels. Her hair was slicked back and wavy. Her face held a look of intention. She sat with both a stiff back and smile and told Ellen and the world what it is like to live with Lupus.

“It is an autoimmune disease; I will have it forever and you just have to take care of yourself,” Gomez told Ellen and the audience. “I can relate to people.”

Lupus is a chronic autoimmune disease that causes the body to attack itself, unable to differentiate between its own healthy tissue and invaders. According to the Lupus Foundation of America, 1.5 million people have Lupus in America and five million have it worldwide. [continue reading…]

Honoring Women with Disabilities During Women’s History Month

Haben Girma

Haben Girma has been advocating for herself since she attended elementary school in Oakland, California. She became the first Deafblind person to graduate from law school when she earned her degree from Harvard Law School in 2013. She is a civil rights attorney who advocates for disability rights, a public speaker who travels the country changing people’s perceptions of the disability community in the media and has been featured in Forbes “30 Under 30” and on NBC and NPR.

In 1983, five years before Girma was born, her mother Saba Gebreyesus fled Eritrea, a city in Africa with approximately six million people, taking two weeks to walk to Sudan and sleeping in trees “surrounded by hungry hyenas.” But she was determined to give Girma the opportunities her son wasn’t given; he also was born deafblind. [continue reading…]

Honoring Women with Disabilities During Women’s History Month

Barbara Corcoran

Barbara Corcoran is an American business woman who started a real estate brokerage business, The Corcoran Group, at the age of 23. Famous for her TV personality on ABC’s Shark Tank as an entrepreneur and judge, she credits her determination and drive to her childhood diagnosis of dyslexia.

“When you cannot pronounce the other words that other kids are reading readily and the kids are laughing at you or are shouting the wrong letter to you, or the wrong syllable to you, it’s as painful as a child that I have never gotten over it. Honest to God, I’m sure of that. And so, when I got out of school, I really decided that I’m going to prove once and for all that I am not stupid,” she said in an interview with Spectrum News NY1. [continue reading…]

I don’t wear glasses, at least physically speaking. My identity as an American Jew with learning disabilities acts like glasses though. It is as if my disability is a lens teaching me the power of perspective. I can apply my Judaism lens to better understand my disability, and my disability helps me understand Judaism. Together both teach me the true meaning of otherness.

You know how when you are little and everyone asks you what you want to be when you grow up? You probably stared flatly at that adult, eyes gleaming with optimism, saying something cool like police officer, doctor, rocket scientist, maybe even President. But, for me, dreaming big meant being a school bus driver. I thought it would play to my strengths of talking to people. [continue reading…]