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Book Review: Reforming Welfare

work is that it has been produced by disabled feminists, who have taken a slightly different approach to disability than male theorists and researchers. The social model of disability, in its founding versions, stressed the structures which disable people with impairment. The emphasis was on collective and public dimensions of disadvantage: employment, the built environment, the economy. These priorities led to the neglect of more personal and private dimensions of disabled people’s experience: the body, children and parenting, health and genetics, sexuality. As Morris writes in her introduction: ‘A number of women felt that the prominence of men within the disabled people’s movement, and their general reluctance to talk about feelings, has made it difficult to move beyond this rather simplistic version of the social model’ (p. 14). Feminist thinkers, including many of those represented in this collection, took the lead in extending the radical thinking to these other areas, and in the process reconceived the social model itself. This approach is more fruitful than the suggestion on the cover of this book that ‘disabled women have also been marginalized by the disability movement itself ’. While the disability movement cannot be said to be free of sexist or racist attitudes, in fact women activists have been extremely prominent in organizations, taking up many leadership positions. However, there has been more of an imbalance in the production of academic work on disability, with the exception of Jenny Morris herself. As more feminist researchers and theorists produce new accounts of disability, this can only be to the benefit of disability studies as a developing discipline. Women’s studies too would undoubtedly benefit from taking on board the challenge which disabled feminist work presents to the mainstream.