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Part One: Badass Disabled Women from History You Should Know About
International Women’s Month is the perfect time to draw attention to the many women who have been overlooked throughout history in favour of their more privileged male counterparts. But one demographic who are frequently missing from these round-ups are disabled women.
Earlier this month, I was wondering where all of them were. As a disabled woman, should I believe there was no-one like me who managed to succeed in the past? Did we all simply not exist? Did we all spend our lives hidden away? Or were we just not being talked about?
It’s true, that to be a disabled woman in the distant and not-too distant past was even more of a struggle than it is today, with the double disenfranchisements of patriarchy and ableism in full-swing to contend with, which held women as being worth less than men, and disabled people as being less than human. And that’s even before we begin to consider the archaic medical systems, or the even greater struggles disabled Women of Colour faced in simply surviving in such a world, let alone thriving.
Imagine my surprise and delight, then, when my research revealed not just one or two, but hundreds of stories of disabled women from around the world, who not only led fulfilling lives, but were instrumental in shaping the times they lived in.
In Part One of this series, I’ve brought together six incredible disabled women who helped shape the 19th and 20th centuries.
Sarah Bernhardt (1844–1923)
Sarah Bernhardt was one of France’s most celebrated stage actresses, eventually becoming one of the first major actresses to make sound recordings and act in motion pictures, and starring in some of the most popular plays of the 19th and 20th centuries — including productions by Alexandra Dumas and Victor Hugo. Uncommonly for the time, she played male roles as well as female, even reprising Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and saying of her habit of picking up these parts:
“The roles of men are in general more intellectual than the roles of women… Only the role of Phédre gives…
