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HOMEWORKING for Disabled Women

For years women worked out of their homes as mothers, caregivers, cooks, clothing makers and counsellors. For even more years women tried to organize to ensure the rights of women to enter the work force ( read leave the home) and be emancipated. I am all for emancipation.

I like freedom and I also like choice. One of the tenets of the Independent Living philosophy which is the groundwork of the disability rights movement is personal choice and dignity. Because disabled people were denied choice for so long, we are pretty protective of this right now. And, as someone who is both a woman and a person with a disability, I’d like to think I have even more right to choose, (smile).

I have the right, as a woman and as a disabled person, to determine what is best for me, and my child. But it seems, (and if you cannot tell there is ironic undertones in this article), that some of my choices are not as politically supported as others. I know when I first started working from my home, doing mostly contract work, I was told by women friends that it was not really "working" if it wasn’t in an office. I was also told, by disabled people, that my work was not mainstream, that it was not living up to the ideals of getting a job in the real world. Someone even went so far as to tell me I was isolating myself.

Let me digress for a moment. Some feminists have criticized big businesses for contracting work out to women in homes in an attempt to avoid unionization, paying benefits and creating positive work environments. These feminists are RIGHT, of course, that no one should be forced into the position of having to work from home. No business should be allowed to require workers to work at home. And surely no employer which is inaccessible for a person using a wheelchair should be permitted to pay a staff member to work at home instead of creating accessible work space. So, having said that. I am all for the rights of workers to go to a safe, wellpaid, accessible work place and have employers paying them benefits and allowing unionization.

I, however, do not choose to go softly into that foray. I do not want to wear business clothes, nor be seen in public when I work. I choose to work from my home and travel only when I want to. This may seem idealistic and, to some at least, deluded, but it is my reality. I am significantly disabled and despite some efforts in the past to get jobs at universities and provincial governments, my life has basically been successful when I get contract work.

I like having the choice to sleep in, to have a nap when my fatigue gets too difficult to bear, and to hire other women to make phone calls for me when I cannot do it. I have several friends who I have hired, and paid well, at various times, out of the money I make through contracts. I am not saying that I am rich, or that the women I pay get rich working for me, but my choice to stay home has helped more than me.

My home office is not sophisticated, it’s my living room. I moved it out of my bedroom when I started getting helpers coming in and I didn’t want them in my bedroom. I have a computer with a modem, a printer, a fax, a TTY ( for those of you unfamiliar, this is a keyboard like device used by Deaf people to make phone calls); I have light flashers to tell me if the doorbell is rung or the phone is ringing. Using these devices I am connected to the world. I make phone calls to friends and peers when I want to. I receive email and send it about three times a day. I send my work via email and work on a computer or by hand most of the time. Since my work is mainly research and writing, and not physical labour, I can do it at any time, including 3 am and even while watching the X Files.

I find the work I do to be empowering. Financially I am far better off, emotionally I have reached peaks I could never have reached while trying to fit into the corporate or non-profit world. I have a pierced tongue, purple hair, a 17 year old Black daughter and I use a wheelchair. I like working at home, and I do choose it; it was not forced upon me.

Back to the emancipation issue. For some people work makes one whole. Others, are whole without paid work and they are just as happy to do volunteer jobs or raise children. Feminists sometimes forget that we fought for that right too. And we need to support and encourage women who never paid into to CPP (Canada Pension Plan) or EI (Employment Insurance) and who wont ever get disability pensions from their employers because they didn’t work. Women who become disabled and who are not eligible for the benefits of workers need to have choices. One of these choices, one that I made fresh out of university, needs to be the chance to work from home. If we criticize women who make these choices as being isolated, behind the times or not mainstream enough, then we lose sight of our bigger battle.

Economic inequality has far more devastating effects on women than the choice to work from home. If I cannot get to work, or if I am too tired to work 9-5 or if I cannot talk or hear and cannot do receptionist jobs, what choices are left. I finish this article on a note of satisfaction because I am writing it on a computer sitting in my living room and sending it via the Internet to Women’space. I am smiling because I will eventually read the article published when it is delivered to me by regular mail and I will enjoy reading all the other articles and learning, as I do every time, about other women’s experiences. I feel the least isolated I ever have, and I have more economic resources now than I ever did trying to find work in the "real" world. Come visit, see how real my home, my home work, and disabled life as a woman really is.