2022 Volume 63 Issue 1 Pages 30-44
This study aimed to clarify the multiple discrimination experiences of a visually impaired woman based on her life story and attempted to elucidate how she signified such encounters. Data were collected from a life story interview with a visually impaired woman and were analyzed through qualitative coding. The investigation demonstrated that she confronted multiple discriminatory experiences at every stage of her life:compulsory education, occupation, love, marriage, pregnancy, and stillbirth. The following eight elements were derived from the analysis as constituting the manifold gender and disability-related biases faced by the respondent: 1) underestimation of abilities, 2) lack of information, 3) absence of reasonable accommodation, 4) being forced to select economic independence before achieving autonomy, 5) forcible intercourse by male customers in the massage field, 6) patriarchy, 7) the woman’s role, 8) the compulsion to accept the miserable societal image of visually impaired people. These elements were intertwined throughout the respondent’s life and manifested as multiple discrimination. In addition, the respondent equated the feelings elicited from the multifaceted prejudice with riding a surfboard. This study reveals the practices leading to the individualization and subjectivation of a woman who insisted on her right to an independent life, rejected the image of victimization, and resisted the social discrimination against the visually impaired.
