Beyond the margins: feminist justice for all bodies
If you only have one minute
Recent welfare cuts in the UK risk pushing thousands into poverty, with disabled women likely to be among the most affected. Indeed, as women make up the majority of disabled people and remain among the most disadvantaged in the labour market, they are particularly vulnerable to financial insecurity. But beyond the economic impact, these cuts also remove a vital lifeline for a group significantly more exposed to domestic abuse, where financial independence can be crucial to leaving unsafe situations.
The invisibility of disabled women within society extends into feminist movements themselves. Without critical self-reflection, they reproduce ableist biases, with disabled women too often reduced to symbolic inclusion rather than meaningfully heard. As a result, mainstream advocacy frequently fails to address the specific barriers they face. A truly inclusive feminism must centre disabled women’s experiences and ensure their voices shape decision-making. Transformative change cannot be achieved while leaving the most marginalised behind.
“Never forget that it will take only a political, economic, or religious crisis for the rights of women to be called into question”. These words, written by Simone de Beauvoir, could not ring more true for disabled women today. As geopolitical tensions escalate, from the war in Ukraine to the ongoing situation in the Middle East, calls to slash welfare spending in favour of defence budgets are growing louder. While the government has firmly pushed back, insisting it is not a zero-sum game, the narrative of a “benefit budget out of control” is becoming increasingly mainstream. And behind the narrative lies an uncomfortable truth: the majority of benefits claimants are women, and it is the most vulnerable among them who will pay the heaviest price.
In March 2025, the government announced a near-halving of the Universal Credit health element, from £423 to £217.26 per month for new claimants, alongside a four-year freeze, eroding all claimants’ support with inflation. This cut came into force in April 2026 and is expected to push approximately 50,000 newly disabled people into poverty by 2030. The government plans to mitigate this by encouraging more people into work, but this overlooks a stark reality: disabled women are among the most marginalised in the labour market. With 27% of women being disabled compared to 22% of men, women make up the majority (56%) of disabled people in the UK, are more likely to be on low pay than disabled men, and face a disability gender pay gap of 31% - far exceeding both the disability gap (17.2%) and the gender gap (7%).
Beyond its economic consequences, this measure risks trapping disabled women in situations of abuse. Disabled women are twice as likely to experience domestic violence as non-disabled women, including forms of coercive control specific to disability, such as the withholding of medication or assistive devices. Leaving or reporting abuse can be significantly more difficult, as many rely on their abuser for daily support or are socially isolated. In this context, financial support is not simply income, but a crucial source of autonomy. Reducing it entrenches dependence and strips away one of the few means of escape. What is framed as a budgetary adjustment is therefore removing a vital lifeline for some of the most vulnerable women in society.
The feminist movement’s missing voices
If this policy disproportionately harms disabled women, it is not by accident. It reflects a deeper, structural invisibility. Disabled women’s realities remain largely unseen in a society built on ableism: one that discriminates against disabled people through the assumption that they require “fixing”, while prioritising the needs non-disabled people. Without sustained critical reflection, feminist movements are not exempt from the harmful stereotypes and misconceptions about disability that permeate society.
Even where feminist movement seeks to be inclusive, their spaces do not always live up to that ambition. Structural exclusion persists, with disabled women’s knowledge and expertise acknowledged symbolically but rarely treated as legitimate sources of leadership or decision-making. Inclusion often remains performative - highlighted in mission statements or at events, yet rarely enacted in everyday practice. What results is superficial accommodation without substantive change. This dynamic also imposes additional emotional labour on disabled women, who must consistently translate their experiences for non-disabled colleagues while managing others’ discomfort and sustaining personal resilience in the face of ongoing structural neglect.
When disabled women’s voices are not fully included within feminist movements, mainstream advocacy inevitably fails to account for their realities. While many movements fight for essential rights, they frequently overlook the additional barriers disabled women face. Campaigns for reproductive rights, for instance, rarely address the inaccessibility of healthcare facilities or the persistent gaps in healthcare providers’ knowledge and sensitivity around disability. Similarly, while women have long fought to be both free from objectification and able to express their sexuality on their own terms, disabled women are still too often confined to a contradictory space of infantilisation and fetishisation.
From fragmentation to solidarity
In an ableist society shaped by rigid gender norms, disabled women are left to navigate a fragmented landscape of advocacy, caught between feminist and disability movements, neither of which fully represents them. Yet this divide is not inevitable. Both movements are rooted in the same idea that “the personal is political” and that systems of oppression are socially constructed around narrow definitions of what is “normal” or “superior”. The struggles at their core are also deeply interconnected, from the fight for bodily autonomy to freedom from violence, and treating these as separate issues overlooks the ways in which they reinforce one another.
Moving beyond this fragmentation requires more than symbolic inclusion: it demands a fundamental shift in how feminist advocacy is imagined and practiced. For instance, this means creating spaces for disabled women not just to participate, but to lead, treating their experiences not as anecdotal but as essential to shaping policy and centering their voices in decision-making processes. It also means ensuring that services are not only available but accessible: for context, only 3.3% of refuge centres employ staff proficient in British Sign Language and only 21.4% offer support for women with learning difficulties. A feminism that fails to include disabled women cannot claim to be universal. But one that does has the potential to be far more transformative, and for everyone.
