Underpaid - if paid at all

Worth?! An Ongoing Bugbear

 

I've got something I need to get off my chest today. It's an issue that's been bugging me for quite some time now – the unfair judgment of someone's worth based on their disability. Let me paint you a little picture.

 

Imagine this scenario: you've just returned from a lovely holiday, bags unpacked, and you go to toss that first load of laundry in the wash...only to find your washing machine has decided to quit on you. Disaster! With a soggy mess on your hands, you call up a trusted plumber to come and save the day. A few hours later, Mr. P arrives, does his thing, and just like magic, your laundry crisis is averted. Did you stop to question his skills or the fee he charged? Of course not! You took it on faith that this professional had the proper training, years of experience under his tool belt, and the know-how to get the job done right.  

 

Now, let's add a twist – what if Mr. P was disabled? Would you have then started haggling over his fee, assuming he was somehow less qualified for the job? I'd certainly hope not! Yet, this is the kind of nonsense that the disabled population so often face.

 

I remember when I was just starting as a trainer, I was being paid 40% less than my non-disabled colleagues...all because some people didn't see me as "qualified enough." As if the way I moved or spoke somehow negated years of education and real-world experience! Even a decade into my career, clients would expect a discount. It was interesting that having delivered Equality & Diversity, and leadership training to one particular organisation, they asked for a lower price for the disability equality training session. Furthermore, I was asked to give it half the time, and it was abysmally attended.

 

The assumptions don't stop there, either. There's this bizarre notion that just because we have a difference, the only expertise we could possibly have as Disabled people is in disability. It's like assuming someone who wears glasses must be an ophthalmologist! Um, no...just like anyone else, we have a wide range of experience, knowledge and skills. My abilities and interests go far beyond identity or physique! 

Here comes the real stinger! You would be amazed how many people have asked me to work for free! That’s right. Having failed the interview, and faced the ableism of interviewers. “Surely, you don't need to work… I don't believe your CV… you have the wrong skills…” etc. I often get an invitation to do countless hours of volunteering instead. Literally asking me to pay in time, effort and money for own employment. My last volunteer job cost £140, a sum I had to find.

 

On top of being insulting, being treated as worthless is also incredibly painful. How many opportunities have I missed out on simply because someone decided I'd be "better off" sticking to a volunteering or disability-related role? Unfortunately, for many years, I didn't think to question such narrow-minded thinking. I accepted that I should specialise in disability because it was expected of me. Needless say I did eventually get my head around a socially pervasive and complex subject. These days, I know better even if I can fight it. With a master's degree, a PhD, and decades of valuable experience under my belt, at least I know who is undervaluing my worth. I may move, speak, or think a little differently owing to unusual experiences, but that certainly doesn't make me less talented or knowledgeable in the field. At the end of the day, disabled or not, we're all just human beings doing our best.

 

So let's start giving each other a fair shake (it's a gift) shall we? Our quirks don't define our abilities, the lines aren't straight on human development. I'd trust myself or any other disabled person to unclog your metaphorical pipes just as well as the next plumber!

Equality and Awareness

Disability Awareness and Disability Equality training are often used interchangeably these days. However, it's helpful to understand why equality and awareness carried different meanings for disability activists a few decades ago. In the 1990s, disability awareness training was largely impairment-specific, delivered by experts in different impairments, and often employed by large charities. These charities had access to money but also had significant power and influence at local, institutional and governmental levels. This inequality of power and voice still persists today - a cultural silencing. You'll notice that far greater 'ink' is given to big charities than to grassroots organisations - in the press, television or radio, for example.

 

As I discovered many years after delivering disability awareness training myself, equality programmes were created more intentionally as a response to the power held by ‘expert’ professionals. Equality training emerged in opposition to the cultural silencing imposed on the disabled population. Disability equality, often based on Disability Studies, emphasises the group voice of those silenced by ableism, and focuses on the shared interests of d/Disabled campaigners and d/Deaf and Disabled People's Organisations. This helped secure greater accountability in a storytelling that articulates civil rights aspect of inequality - the Disabled People's Movement's fight against institutionalisation (Morris, 1995). Disability Equality focuses on the institutional and structural inequality that drives discrimination, disadvantage and hate crime, because it allows an exploration of structural power and privilege. (Able Privilege, here, is defined as not facing the prejudice and discrimination of ablism)  Rather than highlighting individual differences, it addresses the characteristics of disabled people’s oppression, that affects 3 in 10 people, while respecting individual experience, choice and identify.

 

When I was introduced to Disability Equality, and the Social Model more specifically, it changed my perspective on my own personal experience - as a result my language over time. It changed the way I articulated the subject, I dropped private feelings and personal preferences, in public conversations and in written work. I began to tell a story that told of theoretical ideas and framed experience within the context of the d/Deaf and Disabled People's Movement. I purposely aimed to reflect shared knowledge, experience and wisdom. While far from academic in those days, I was keen to be part of a conversation that had started because Disabled activists refused to be silent. This meant presenting societal oppression, then disablism now ableism, as akin to sexism, racism, homophobia and religious intolerance. The books came much later, and my library grew slowly, but three decades later, I've joined a few dots between lived experience, academic theory and civic protest. I still speak 'in the streets', to paraphrase hooks, fearing a conversation that was only to be held within the walls of universities.

 

I use disability 'equality' to place the interests of the disabled population firmly at the centre of organisational accountability, responsible business, and sustainable development. I encourage people to embed an understanding of structural ableism in their organisational storytelling, the way they would sexism, homophobia, classism, ageism and racism. By framing the challenge as dealing with barriers and attitudes in the workplace, not with disabled individuals, the training also provides definitions for inclusive practice, with disabled people facing a problem rather than being a problem. In terms of the Sustainable Development Goals, disability equality training aligns with the social and environmental implications of climate change and global inequality. However, most crucially, the training is led by disabled people, their groups, networks and communities - D/deaf and Disabled People's Organisations, for example. If I seem intransigent, please believe I'm less radical than I was. There's a plentiful blend of excellent training out there, and I applaud those tackling this mountainous issue. This is but my perspective, not a unique truth. (See "Am I Disabled?")

 

As I stated in my thesis:

The articulation of equality is critical, I think, because in the past, impairment training had largely been delivered by non-disabled professionals, and or those with medical expertise or academics from clinical disciplines (Campbell & Gillespie-Sells, 1991). Formalised in 1985 by the 'Disabled Trainers Forum' (Barnes, 1991, Section 2 – online text has no page), Disability Equality practitioners had personal experience as disabled individuals, giving them proximity to experience but also an understanding of group politics [interest] and theory - the social model of disability as a tool (Oliver, 1990; Beresford, 2003). The distinction of disability equality, therefore, was its perspective - the ideas of the disabled people's movement. It is not an attack on doctors or medicine but the extent of their power in the lives of disabled people. As a shorthand, the Social Model encourages us to avoid the specific characteristics of disability stereotypes – that disabled people are few, faulty and needy – and the assumptions linked to the disempowerment enforced (possibly unwittingly) by medical workers or clinical experts (Morris, 1995; Oliver, 2016). (L. Chapman)