The topic of people
with disabilities and how they carry out their lives has really impacted my
life. It seems to be my main interests now and I want to learn more about their
lives. I’ve already looked at how many people with disabilities live in poverty
and what education and going to school is like for them, but what about the
next step after that, working in a career to earn money so they can take care
of themselves.
When I was doing research for my other blogs I came across
a statistic that about 15% of Canadians have some sort of disability. This means that there are lots of people with
disabilities that probably need a job or can’t get one. Also while reading Canadian Public Policy Hum says “Persons
with disabilities have lower earnings than those without disabilities”. This is
crazy, what makes people think that it’s fair for people to be treated
differently, and paid less just because they suffer some sort of disability.
It’s just not right, and it doesn’t even end there, “Workers with disabilities
… are paid less and work fewer hours” (Hum, 1996). Some of the people with
disabilities probably can’t work many hours because of a restriction of some
sort due to their disability, but that doesn’t mean that they should be getting
paid less. I personally know someone that can’t work over a certain amount of
hours because of their physical handicap which isn’t their fault. If I knew
that they weren’t getting paid at the same rate as everyone else I’d be super
upset. Also while looking in this information it is found that females with
disabilities make even less than men with disabilities. “Disability status may
have a different effect on the labour market activity of men and woman” (Hum,
1996).
When we look at this information from a liberal feminist
view we can definitely see that our values are not being exercised. Not only
are people with disabilities being treated in the labour force poorly, by
having less hours and getting paid less than people with disabilities but they probably
aren’t getting the opportunities to prove that they can work as well, or as
hard. This theory also believes that men and woman are equal. If they knew what
was going on in the labour force they would be a little ticked off. Not only do
woman in general get paid less and have less hours to work in the labour market
but woman with disabilities are getting even less than woman without
disabilities. Liberal feminists think that men and woman are the same, hence
they should be able to do the same amount of work for the same amount of time,
but they would need opportunities to be able to prove this. Liberal feminists
also believe that this can all be blamed on social conditioning. People grow up
learning that woman, and people with disabilities are ‘less of people’ meaning
that they can’t do the same work, or be as smart, or comprehend as much. That’s
absurd, I know many people with disabilities that are just as able to work and
have the will power to do so. It’s great that most men can do the hard jobs but
people with disabilities and woman can do the same things, not all, but some,
just like some men can do them but maybe not all.
All in all I just think that people with disabilities are
getting enough credit for what they do. They go day after day struggling with
tasks because they have a disability that might slow them down or put up a road
block making them re-route they’re plan. They can do just as much as we can,
and even if we might doubt that they can do something we should always give
them a chance to prove us wrong, especially if they insist on trying!
By: Chelsea L
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