sub21
From: Christopher.Newell
Sent: Sunday, 24 July 2005 8:23 PM
To: Family Responsibilities
Subject: Submission re Striking the Balance
"Striking the Balance: A Disability Response"
I am grateful to the sex discrimination unit of HREOC for releasing the important discussion paper entitled Striking the Balance: Women, Men, Work and Family. The exploration of the significant gender dimensions to the balancing act with regard to work and family is very welcome, especially in terms of the recognition of the substantial disadvantage still experienced by women.
However, as a person with disability who is also a scholar in the area, in reading this discussion paper significant issues for Australians with disability emerge. In the first place, rather than contributing to a positive image of people with disability, our situation is told in terms of the dominant stereotypes of disability: in terms of the burden of care. We already have enough negative attitudes about disability. Surely it is possible to narrate people with disabilities as more than burdens upon families and the State?
Related to this is the conspicuous lack of any reference to the social model of disability, identifying why it is that those of us with disability - and those who care for us- are so disadvantaged. There is a significant literature by people with disabilities ourselves about how society disables people with impairments, with social structures causing stereotypical burden. An example is a recent book on the Australian situation
For more than 25 years now the motto of the disability rights movement has been "Nothing about us without us". A significant proportion of HREOC's discussion paper talks about people with disability. Yet conspicuously absent from the wide range of stakeholders consulted is any representative organisation of Australians with disabilities.
Hence, it is hardly surprising that some of the fundamental issues for me as person with disability are not tackled. Where, I wondered as I read this paper, in the binary construction of "carer" verses "cared for" is the recognition of people with disabilities as carers? Where are the vital issues to do with supporting us to care for others, including children? Why does the discussion paper just describe current government support, without providing a critique of that support from the perspective of those who receive it?
In particular I would suggest there is a vital need for an alternative imagining of a care that enables. One that imagines what a human rights-based approach to the provision of care would mean for all parties.
Also strangely absent from the document is the importance of valuing people with disabilities. Yet the report says: "Valuing care also means that as a society we value the children and the elderly who are the recipients of care." When will those of us who live with disability rate such valuing?
Everyday many of us with disability know the reality - and frustrations - of being cared for. Everyday, we know the frustrations of being burdensome recipients, rather than listened to as valued experts on our situation. The HREOC discussion paper Striking the Balance properly raises significant gender issues with regard to work and family. I dream of a day when Australians with disability will be valued participants in all aspects of life, supported to be all that we can be. The proper provision of care at home, work and in the community is an import dimension of this.
There are so many aspects to a critical discussion about disability, work and family not attended to in this discussion paper. I would suggest that an important starting point in addressing this would be to talk with us rather than merely about us.
--
School of Medicine,
University of Tasmania,
Private Bag 73, Hobart, Tasmania,7001, Australia.
Ph: +61 3 62264854 Fax: +61 3 62236174
Home Ph: 03 62248584
Mobile Ph: 0418545611
This email message is intended only for the addressee(s) and contains
