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INDEX
Introduction .............................................................................. 3
Historical overview ................................................................. 3
The rights theory: disabilities and social model. .......... 4
Reconstructing disabilities: the feminist perspective . 7
Conclusions ........................................................................... 10
Bibliography:.......................................................................... 12

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Introduction

Human rights field has been developing in the last years. It has gone from
having a really narrow perspective to a have a really broad one. One field that
has been introduced is disabilities. With the pass of the years, there have been
several conceptions in the field of human rights regarding disabilities.

However, when it comes to studying human rights in this field, it is important to

understand how we think about individuals suffering from this problem. Do we
think of them as individuals who should be treated in and individualized
manner? Do we think about them as a collective of people who we should try
to improve their lives by making their easier from the support point of view? Do
we think of them as independent and autonomous subjects or are we
(somehow) adopting paternalizing manners towards them?

In this essay, I will try to address how the theory of rights should be (and in
part, is) reshaped by different theories (the social model and the feminist
perspective) in order to provide a more just society to everyone living in it
regardless of their capacities.

Historical overview

If disable people are now being discriminated against on an institutional and

social basis, years and decades ago it was even worse. The different ways in
which society has chosen to treat these people can tell a lot about the
acceptance of such group. When talking about disabilities, the easier way to do
it is making a differentiation between a model focused on medicalization of such
disabilities and another one regarding a more structural-contextual factor.

In order to understand these two approaches, it is best to define 3 categories:

the two first, regarding a pathological model, are disregarding and rehabilitation
one. Third, the social model, which will be the focus of this essay.

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In the first place, we can find the disregarding model. According to Palacios It
has two sub models inside:

• Eugenic; is based on the death on the individual. Regarding a

subject which is not able to survive on its own, the best solution
was to kill him as it would no longer be a “burden” to society.
(Palacios, 2015)
• Exclusion: with the pass of the years and the introduction of a
Judeo-Christian moral, it seemed more difficult to simply kill
individuals with functional diversity. Such moral developed into
these individuals being excluded from groups (either because
they were useless to the perception of society or as a fear: they
were thought as being cursed by God, thus people were afraid to
approach them). (Palacios, 2015).

In the second place and according to Palacios, there is the rehabilitation model.
The rehabilitation model refers to the disability as the individual having some
kind of deficits. Therefore, individuals are not useless or a burden to society as
long as they can be rehabilitated. (Palacios, 2015) It also thinks about the
disabled person as having an individual condition, and does not try to study
such disability from a structural point of view-

However, with the apparition of human rights, disabilities started to be seen in

a completely different way. As a way of establishing a common ground for this
group to be protected, it started to be necessary to not only see this as
individual problems but a most societal construct in order to be able to treat
them in a correct way. This is how the social model will appear.

The rights theory: disabilities and social model.

Human rights have been developing and can now understand disabilities in
different manners. Going away from the classical medical and pathological

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vision that have been previously introduced, human rights have started to adopt
a vision of disabilities more related to the structural problem. By developing the
social model (stemming from the disabilities studies), society can now
approach the different issues regarding disabilities: by avoiding
pathologization, it is possible now to locate other problems more related to the
way in which society has been built.

We conceive the social model as a way of understanding disabilities. When we

talk about this model, we refer to disability as the result of the interaction
between a person with certain characteristics that may be seen as not
normative and a social environment which is not adapted to such
characteristics: “the problem is the failure of systems and environments to
include and accommodate that person” (Shakespeare, 2008)

Therefore, we have a society which must be changed or rehabilitated in order

to be just to every person. Solutions should never be personally oriented, but
socially adaptative in order to be successful. Therefore, society is constructed
in order to be oppressive to people having disabilities, as it is made by people
capable for people capable and it should be rethought in order to be just.

However, how does this relate with the perspective of human rights? The
disabilities and social model of disabilities must always be focused in the
human dignity of the people with functional disability and must pursue personal
autonomy (as freedom) (Palacios, 2015).

This social model is highly important in order to include disable people (or
people with functional diversity, as it is okay to call them, too) into a set of
common rights. I think a good point of analysis regarding why the social model
is important in order to guarantee certain rights, and going directly into
analyzing Rawls (2009) would be a good way to start.

According to Nussbaum (2006) in a society solely driven by social contract,

disabled people could be excluded. There is a confusion of moral and functional
limitations and it is quite common that disable people are collectively thought
as having both limitations. However, moral limitations are not inherently related

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with disabilities. Also, this leads to the thought that disable people are not useful
to society (as there is not such mutual advance when someone involves in
relationships with them) as they are not capable of doing things that “normal”
people would be able to do. These two misconceptions about disable people
develop into the main reasons why they could be excluded from the “social
contract” theory.

The social model is able to contradict each of these beliefs by assuring that it
is not the fact that disable people are not useful or morally conscious but that
society have created a series of stereotypes which “paternalize” what disable
people are. The social model is an important step for rethinking our theory of
rights, not trying to adapt individuals to what the subject of the original theory
is (the capable individual) but by making a broader interpretation of what the
subject should be.

How is this related specifically with human rights? I would like to focus on how
the theory of rights is to be modified

Human dignity and disabilities

According to Cuenca (2015), the way in which dignity has been constructed
may have been oppressive to certain groups of people with the pass of the
time, and disable people have been one of the mainly affected groups.
According to Patricia Cuenca one of the main problems regarding the
conception of dignity in the theory of rights is that it does not take into
account things such as “the value of the capabilities, the respect for diversity
and the origin of the limits of the capabilities”. Firstly, dignity should never
be related to determined capabilities that average individuals may have,
because that would exclude a huge amount of people. Secondly,
capabilities should never be understood in absolute terms (you have it or
you do not have it) but as a spectrum: each individual may have them more
or less developed and no capacity is more important than other.

Autonomy (as freedom) and disabilities

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 Also by reading Cuenca (2015), one important value of human rights is
freedom of the individuals. In this way, enjoying a certain degree of
autonomy and well-being in the exercise and development of the individual
himself seems inevitable. However, they tend to have quite paternalistic
behavior with disabled people inherently and without taking them into
account, treating them from the beginning as incompetent. According to
Patricia Cuenca, there are three things that should be done to guarantee
this right to people with disabilities.

Firstly, understanding autonomy as a goal to achieve and not as some kind

of characteristic which exist prior to the individual and the support given to
such individual. Disabled people may be autonomous when the social
environment has given them enough resources and help for them to be
autonomous.

Secondly, a perspective of autonomy which has a double view. A first view

in a more negative way, by which interference of the State may not happen
in order to endanger the individual, and a second view, in a more positive
way, so that the State intervenes to guarantee such autonomy.

Reconstructing disabilities: the feminist perspective

However, it seems that the social model should not be seen as the unique and
perfect social contextual model. The replacement of the medical model by the
social model, even though it has provided with some kind of advances (such
as solving more collective problems, not only related to the individual) have
been ignoring other important concepts such as the suffering, the pain or
medical concepts that should be incorporated in a new model regarding a
broader redefinition.

Because disability is not only medical neither social you cannot address the
problem without addressing other complexities such as the concept of caring.

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When talking about caring from a disability and feminist perspective, we are not
(only) talking about the responsibilities within our relationships, but as the
process by which social reproduction occurs. What is social reproduction?
When constructing a productive system, there are certain fields which should
“sustain” such system. According to Polanyi (2007) in the current economic
system, such fields are social reproduction, ecology and the differentiation
between politics and economy.

In order to follow the development of this essay, the social reproduction field
will be used. Disabilities are a double-sided oppression for the way in which
society has been constructed. Therefore, instead of vindicating a model of
disabilities based only in a medical or social perspective, I will argue for a
perspective of human rights which, involving disabilities and women can protect
both the person to be cared of and the one who carries out the action of caring
(usually women, and, when it comes to commodation of such relation, poor or
migrant women). However, here are two main points to analyze here. Firstly,
whether we should confront disabilities as pursuing the objective of personal
autonomy or arguing more for an interdependent view of such relationship. On
the other side, the way in which this relationship should be constructed will also
be addressed in this essay.

Addressing the first question is important precisely to understand the second

one. What I would like to argue about is whether the concept of autonomy as
freedom is actually a real and effective concept regarding disabilities and
interpersonal relations.

As we have seen in the previous sections, there is a tendency within the

theories of rights, to speak of autonomy as independence or freedom, to
translate said autonomy in purely rational or intellectual terms. From feminist
positions, such as Eva Kittay's (2003), the need to build the bases of autonomy
from an emotional perspective will be vindicated. According to the theory, what
characterizes a great majority of us as human beings, beyond our ability to
reason, is the ability to forge relationships of interdependence between us.

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This interdependence, moreover, has to be rethought from models that move
away from traditional contractual theories, such as Rawls's Theory of Justice
(2009). From feminist positions, the need to accept in the first place the
positions of dependence of the human being in all their social relationships will
be presented in order to build a true in(ter)dependence.

With the evolution of society, and the study of human rights, it seems that the
social model and the disabilities studies have confronted with feminism in some
important points, especially regarding the relationship that must be establishes
between the disabled person and the caregiver. (Watson, N., et al, 2004)

In order to answer the second question, the following quote may be a good
introduction:

“The feminist critique of the social model could and should help to reshape this
discourse in ways that address the discrimination and oppression of both
disabled people and their low-paid helpers” (Lloyd, 2001)

According to this, the feminist theory seeks to claim, as we have already said,
the rethinking of the conditions of interpretation of human rights for people with
disabilities, as well as it seeks a change in the treatment of people with
functional diversity.

Although it is true that the widely used term "support" from the theories of
disabilities has a high value, it cannot be forgotten that this importance is not
usually translated into the living conditions and conciliation that women who
carry out this exercise have in their jobs. Feminists will vindicate the oppression
that disability theory can imply on caregivers: instead of establishing a balance
of power between both sides, it will tend to favor the balance towards the
person with a disability. According to Watson,. N et al (2004) "the disability
movement puts the needs of the cared for above the needs of the carer. "

The commodification of care can have an even stronger effect on this: as social
reproduction work is not as widely paid and a client-worker relationship is
established, instead of the traditional form of social protection care (based on

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family or emotional ties), the power of the client (the person with a disability)
may be too strong over the worker in question (Fraser, 2020). For this reason,
the feminist emancipation model from interdependence seems the correct one
to be able to maintain healthy care relationships and in accordance with the
rights of all the parties involved.

Conclusions
We should not disregard the strong effect and improvement that the social
model approach has implemented into human rights regarding the disabilities
field. In contrast to its previous history, it became a way of guaranteeing rights
In new forms that haven’t been thought previously. Therefore, it seems
important to value it as the important model it is and having it taken into account
when thinking and defining disabilities. As we can see, it has been able to
establish some kind of standards in order to make better the way in we conceive
human rights for disable people.

However, the way in which we build such relationships is also highly important.
Emphasizing the rights of disabled people is progress, of course, but we must
never lose focus on the struggle and guarantee of the rights of other minorities
or groups (such as women, who are approximately 50% of the population). Due
to the way in which society has been constituted, social reproduction and care
have been considered low-skilled jobs (despite being one of the pillars on which
the system is based and without which it could not function). In this way, I
believe that within human rights and their relationship with people with
disabilities, the double edge that this implies should be taken into account: it is
useless to guarantee the improvement of an oppressed group by guaranteeing
the oppression of another or more groups (such as this would be the case of
women, who would see their situation worsened if they were migrants).

Therefore, the emancipation theory regarding interdependence in human

relations seems to be highly important if we want a have a really just social
model. Substituting the mutual advance understood and developed by a lot of

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contractualist thinkers by “mutual trust and interdependence” would be a great
start to guarantee intersectional human rights.

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Bibliography:

Fraser, N. (2020). Los talleres ocultos del capital. Un mapa para la izquierda.
Progressive, 119, 132.

Gomez, P. C. (2015). Disability and Humans Rights: A Theoretical Analysis.

The Age of Human Rights Journal, (4), 34-59.

Kittay, E. (2003). Discapacidad, dignidad y protección. Concilium: Revista

internacional de teología, (300), 119-132.

Lloyd, M. (2001) ‘The Politics of Disability and Feminism: Discord or

Synthesis?’, Sociology 35(4): 714–28.

Palacios, A. (2015). The social model in the international convention on the

rights of persons with disabilities. The Age of Human Rights Journal, (4), 91-
110.

Polanyi, K. (2007). La gran transformación: crítica del liberalismo económico.

Fondo de Cultura Económica.

Rawls, J. (2009). A theory of justice. Harvard university press.

Shakespeare, T. (2008). Disability rights and wrongs. Beyond Disciplinarity,

4(2), 45.

Watson, N., McKie, L., Hughes, B., Hopkins, D., & Gregory, S. (2004). (Inter)
dependence, needs and care: The potential for disability and feminist theorists
to develop an emancipatory model. Sociology, 38(2), 331-350.

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