Issue date: 11/6/07 Section: News

Media Credit: Alex Reside Sociology professor, Tom Gerschick, gives a presentation on "Disability & Gender: Mapping the Sociological Landscape" in Schroeder Hall on Monday morning.

Tom Gerschick, associate professor of sociology, presented his research findings on gender and disability in a presentation titled "Disability and Gender: Mapping the Sociological Landscape."

Gerschick said he became interested in the subject of gender and disability in 1992.

"I had a male grad student with multiple disabilities and he wrote a paper about how the culture did not recognize him as a man," Gerschick said. "Disability is all but invisible in gender theory," Gerschick added.

Gerschick said his research focused on life history interviews with disabled males.

"I wanted to know how does a person create and lead a self-satisfying identity in a world where people do not recognize someone disabled as a man or a woman," Gerschick said.

The age of onset for the disability makes a difference as to how much males internalize their gender role and their disability, Gerschick said.

Gerschick said he interviewed a seventeen-year-old who became disabled at 17, and had just gotten a girlfriend prior to his accident.

"He pulled himself up five steps in his wheelchair trying to get to this girlfriend's apartment," Gerschick said. "He ended up falling and the wheelchair landed on top of him," Gerschick said.

This guy was hyper-masculine and felt humiliated that his girlfriend found him that way, Gerschick explained.

"Some men do not like relying on other people and the idea of 'not being the man,' " Gerschick said.

Men have to reorient themselves because they have bought into the definition of a culture that privileges male independence and sexuality, Gerschick said.

Gerschick said there is a stigma related to having disability.

The way in which rewards and privileges are doled out to those who don't have disabilities, and those people who do have disabilities pay a penalty, Gerschick explained.

For example, the penalty reflects in jobs and opportunities for romantic relationships, Gerschick added.

There are almost 50 million people who have either a physical or mental disability according to the year 2000 census, Gerschick said.

Gerschick said he wanted people to be aware of the consequences of having a disability given how the social life is organized today.

Gerschick said he plans to continue studying this issue as it relates to females and Iraq veterans.

"There are at least 30,000 disabled women and men returning from Iraq," Gerschick said.

The presentation gave a lot of insight into gender and our communities, Sharon Carr, a senior sociology major, said.

"We have a lot of ideas of how certain genders are supposed to act, and we don't give a lot of attention as to the ways disabled members can't act in those certain ways," Carr added.

Page 1 of 1

Article Tools