Keywords
sociology
women with disabilities
Mizoram
How to Cite
Abstract
Disability has existed since ancient times and it was always perceived as a problem within an individual. With the advancement in medicine and technology, disability was considered to be a disease which can be cured by medical practitioners. The study of disability through scientific lens has always aimed for a complete cure in disability. However, it was only a few decades ago when academicians started pointing out the social issues related to disability and how the restrictions and exclusion of society disabled an individual. In this sense, disability is not an individual issue but rather extends to social issue. The study on disability in the field of social sciences, particularly sociology has mainly employed social model of disability to analyzed disability and sociologists mainly look past other relevant sociological theories and concepts to deconstruct disability from a sociological perspective. This study uses mixed methods of both qualitative and quantitative research methods to study the relevance of sociological theories like stigma and alienation and their applicability among 163 women with disabilities in Mizoram. The outcome of the study shows that most of the women with disabilities have low educational qualifications which the respondents have attributed to the ignorance by the government authorities and labelled this ignorance as one of the main causes of stigma. Most of the women have faced stigma from society which led them to alienate themselves from the rest of the society. The effect of such stigma and alienation led them to experience lower self-esteem, lower confidence and lower chances to achieve upward mobility in life. The intersectionality of all these barriers, analyzed through the lens of sociological theories have led the women with disabilities in Mizoram to remain as an "out-group." This study has proven the applicability of selected sociological theories and the contextualization of the findings reveal the importance of conducting disability study through sociological perspectives as it provides a ground-level approach to their real lived-problems and issues and suggest some recommendations to uplift their current situations in Mizoram.
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