The article applies the concept of stratified reproduction to analyse experiences of women with disabilities in Poland. Stratified reproduction – rewarding motherhood for some and disempowering others from being parents – and its relation to ableism is explored in a country context, where reproductive rights struggles are prevalent in the public sphere. Based on qualitative empirical research (in-depth semi-structured interviews and focus group interviews) with 50 women with disabilities, the article shows that women with disabilities are subjected to mechanisms of social control that limit their reproductive decision-making and discourage them from becoming parents. Social control is explored in the context of withdrawal of information about reproductive health and sexuality, navigating access and fear of custody deprivation based on ableist presumptions. The ambivalence between social expectations related to parenthood versus performing care work is explored. The analysis shows that women with disabilities navigate exclusionary norms and challenge understandings of who can become a parent and who can make decisions about who can become a parent. This article offers the concept of stratified reproduction to explain the structural inequalities experienced by women with disabilities with regard to reproduction, and highlights the importance of studying ableism as an essential factor within the reproductive realm.
AddlakhaRPriceJHeidariS (2017) Disability and sexuality: Claiming sexual and reproductive rights. Reproductive Health Matters25(50): 4–9.
2.
BahnerJ (2020) Sexual Citizenship and Disability: Understanding Sexual Support in Policy, Practice and Theory. New York: Routledge.
3.
CampbellFK (2009) Contours of Ableism: The Production of Disability and Abledness. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
4.
CharmazK (2006) Constructing Grounded Theory: A Practical Guide through Qualitative Analysis. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
5.
CiaputaEKrólAMigalskaA, et al. (2014) Macierzyństwo kobiet z niepełnosprawnościami ruchu, wzroku i słuchu. Studia Socjologiczne2(213): 203–224.
6.
ColenS (1995) Like a mother to them: Stratified reproduction and West Indian childcare workers and employers in New York. In: GinsburgFDRappRR (eds) Conceiving the New World Order: The Global Politics of Reproduction. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, pp. 78–102.
7.
DavisLJHughesBGoodleyD, et al. (2012) Disability and Social Theory: New Developments and Directions. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
FlynnEDaggJNí FhlathartaM, et al. (2023) Re(Al) Productive Justice: Final Report. Galway: University of Galway.
10.
FrohmaderCMeekoshaH (2012) Recognition, respect and rights: Women with disabilities in a globalised world. In: DavisLJHughesBGoodleyD (eds) Disability and Social Theory. London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 287–307.
GhaiA (2003) (Dis)embodied Form: Issues of Disabled Women. New Delhi, India: Har-Anand Publications.
13.
GichaneMWHeapMFontesM, et al. (2017) ‘They must understand we are people’: Pregnancy and maternity service use among signing deaf women in Cape Town. Disability and Health Journal10(3): 434–439.
14.
GrabowskaM (2023) New political frontiers, reproductive work, and the long struggle for democracy in Poland. Studi Sulla Questione Criminale22: 93–112.
15.
HryciukRKorolczukE (2013) At the intersection of gender and class: Social mobilization around mothers’ rights in Poland. In: JacobssonKSaxonbergS (eds) Beyond NGO-ization: The Development of Social Movements in Central and Eastern Europe. London: Routledge, pp. 11–44.
16.
KallianesVRubenfeldP (2015) Disabled women and reproductive rights. In: JoffeCReichJ (eds) Reproduction and Society: Interdisciplinary Readings. New York: Routledge, pp. 203–222.
17.
KoralewskaIZielińskaK (2022) ‘Defending the unborn’, ‘protecting women’ and ‘preserving culture and nation’: Anti-abortion discourse in the Polish right-wing press. Culture, Health & Sexuality24(5): 673–687.
18.
KorolczukEKowalskaBSnochowska-GonzalezC, et al. (2019) Bunt kobiet. Czarne Protesty i Strajki Kobiet [Women’s rebellion. Black protests and women’s strikes]. Gdańsk: Europejskie Centrum Solidarności.
19.
KowalskaB (2012) O metodologii feministycznej ogólnie i osobiście. Studia Humanistyczne AGH11(2): 69–80.
20.
KrólAPustułkaP (2018) Women on strike: Mobilizing against reproductive injustice in Poland. International Feminist Journal of Politics20(3): 366–384.
21.
LeeM (2019) I wish I had known sooner: Stratified reproduction as a consequence of disparities in infertility awareness, diagnosis, and management. Women and Health59(10): 1185–1198.
22.
LintonKFRuedaHA (2015) Dating and sexuality among minority adolescents with disabilities: An application of sociocultural theory. Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment25(2): 77–89.
23.
Maciejewska-MroczekERadkowska-WalkowiczM (2019) Do ‘in vitro children’ exist? The ‘ontological choreography’ between public debates and private experiences in Poland. Children’s Geographies17(1): 36–48.
24.
MalacridaC (2009) Performing motherhood in a disablist world: Dilemmas of motherhood, femininity and disability. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education22(1): 99–117.
25.
MalacridaC (2015) A Special Hell: Institutional Life in Alberta’s Eugenic Years. Toronto, Buffalo, and London: University of Toronto Press.
26.
MishtalJ (2015) The Politics of Morality: The Church, the State, and Reproductive Rights in Postsocialist Poland. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press.
27.
MizielińskaJ (2022) Queer Kinship on the Edge? Families of Choice in Poland, 1st edn. London: Routledge.
28.
MizielińskaJStruzikJKrólA (2017) Różnym głosem. Rodziny z wyboru w Polsce. Warszawa : Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN
29.
NawojskiRKowalskaB (2022) ‘Kiedy państwo mnie nie chroni . . .’: Oddolne mobilizacje na rzecz praw reprodukcyjnych a doświadczanie obywatelstwa. Studia Socjologiczne1: 81–103.
30.
PetaC (2017) Disability is not asexuality: The childbearing experiences and aspirations of women with disability in Zimbabwe. Reproductive Health Matters25(50): 10–19.
31.
PriceK (2010) What is reproductive justice? How women of color activists are redefining the pro-choice paradigm. Meridians10(2): 42–65.
32.
RappR (2001) Gender, body, biomedicine: How some feminist concerns dragged reproduction to the center of social theory. Medical Anthropology Quarterly15(4): 466–477.
33.
RobertsD (1998) Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty. New York: Vintage Books.
34.
RossLSolingerR (2017) Reproductive Justice: An Introduction. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.
35.
RuizJF (2017) The committee on the rights of persons with disabilities and its take on sexuality. Reproductive Health Matters25: 92–103.
36.
ShrefflerKMMcQuillanJGreilAL, et al. (2015) Surgical sterilization, regret, and race: Contemporary patterns. Social Science Research50: 31–45.
37.
SigurjónsdóttirHBRiceJD (2016) Framed: Terminating the parenting rights of parents with intellectual disability in Iceland. Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities30(3): 543–552.
38.
SmietanaMThompsonCTwineFW (2018) Making and breaking families–Reading queer reproductions, stratified reproduction and reproductive justice together. Reproductive Biomedicine & Society Online7: 112–130.
39.
SzelewaD (2017) From implicit to explicit familialism: Post-1989 family policy reforms in Poland. In: AuthDHergenhanJHolland-CunzB (eds) Gender and Family in European Economic Policy: Developments in the New Millennium. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 129–151.
40.
TeferaBVan EngenMVan der KlinkJ, et al. (2017) The grace of motherhood: Disabled women contending with societal denial of intimacy, pregnancy, and motherhood in Ethiopia. Disability & Society32(10): 1510–1533.
41.
TremainS (2017) Foucault and Feminist Philosophy of Disability. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
42.
UpadhyayUDDworkinSLWeitzTA, et al. (2014) Development and validation of a reproductive autonomy scale. Studies in Family Planning45(1): 19–41.
43.
UrbańskaS (2015) Matka Polka Na Odległość: z Doświadczeń Migracyjnych Robotnic 1989-2010. Toruń: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika.
44.
Wiszejko-WierzbickaDRacławMWołowiczA, et al. (2018) Byliśmy Jak z Kosmosu: Między (Nie)wydolnością Środowiska a Potrzebami Rodziców z Niepełnosprawnościami. Warszawa: Instytut Spraw Publicznych.
45.
WołowiczA (2015) How Polish women with disabilities challenge the meaning of motherhood. Psychology of Women Quarterly40(1): 80–95.
46.
WołowiczAKocejkoMFerencK (2022a) Women with disabilities and access to gynaecological services in Poland. Disability & Society37(3): 386–405.
47.
WołowiczAKrólAStruzikJ (2022b) Disabled women, care regimes, and institutionalised homophobia: A case study from Poland. Sexuality Research and Social Policy19(2): 777–789.
