Doing “gendered exit” : work, care and the moral practices of disabled persons

Abstract

Previous research into the exclusion of disabled persons from paid work tends to compartmentalize them into a stable and undifferentiated category of “cared-for” subjects. This fixation implicitly approves the ethics of work as the exclusive source of their dignity and citizenship. Drawing on in-depth interviews with Myasthenia Gravis patients and their families, this paper argues that a subscription to the logic of interdependence that organizes the ethics of care enables our participants to transcend the conventional carer/cared-for dichotomy. However, the patriarchal structures in which the agency of our participants finds expression create a gendered distribution of care. By delimiting the possibilities of social membership for disabled persons, this paper embraces the care ethics as an alternative to that of work. It nevertheless circumscribes care by bringing into relief its differential and contingent qualities.