Motherhood Experiences of Visually Impaired Women in China from an Intersectional Approach

This paper draws on a qualitative case study of the motherhood experiences of visually impaired Chinese women. The aim is to explain how disability and gender intersected in terms of motherhood experiences. By applying an intersectionality analytical framework, the present study argues that as people with disabilities, visually impaired women encounter more barriers and receive excessive support that threatens their expression of agency throughout motherhood decisions and childcare; as women with disabilities, visually impaired women receive less support from their family of origins compared to men with disabilities. By reinterpreting disability, employing various strategies to resist societal stigmas, and emphasizing their roles in the public sphere, women with visual impairments challenge the boundaries between disability and ability and reframe their relations with the world as mothers.