Episode Summary

In this episode of Reimagining Disabled Futures, DAWN Canada concludes a three-part series sharing insights from focus group participants involved in the Feminist Economic Recovery Project, part of Mapping Our Future: A 10-Year Vision for Change for Women with Disabilities. Thisepisode centres the lived experiences of women and gender-diverse people with disabilities as they define what it means to live well, navigate barriers to essential services, and imagine what feminist recovery could look like in practice.

Participants reflect on how disability, chronic illness, caregiving responsibilities, and systemic exclusion shape daily life. The conversation highlights the cumulative impact of inaccessible healthcare, housing insecurity, punitive financial support systems, and excessive paperwork. Throughout the episode, participants emphasize that recovery must move beyond individual resilience and instead address the structural conditions that undermine dignity, safety, and wellbeing.

Participants: Focus group participants from DAWN Canada’s Feminist Economic Recovery Project, representing diverse disabilities, genders, regions, and lived experiences.

Key Topics Covered:

Defining "Living Well" with Disability

• Participants describe living well as deeply contextual and shaped by access, energy, and safety.
• Living well may involve small, meaningful acts such as accessing fresh air, maintaining online relationships, or contributing through volunteer work.
• Housebound and immunocompromised participants emphasize safety, masking, and access to virtual spaces.

Access to Essential ServicesParticipants identify multiple barriers across systems:

• Healthcare: inaccessible, unsafe, and often dismissive of chronic illness, neurodivergence, and trauma.
• Transportation: unreliable, car-centric, and inaccessible public transit systems.
• Food access: food banks and grocery systems that are inaccessible for people who are housebound, fatigued, or immunocompromised.
• Home care: irregular, difficult to access, and reliant on constantly re-explaining needs.

Community, Care and Disillusionment The episode explores both the promise and limits of community care.

• Disabled communities, particularly online, are described as life-saving spaces for mutual aid, information-sharing, and survival.
• Participants express grief and disillusionment with broader notions of community that fail to show up during crisis.
• Care is often provided by those with the fewest resources, highlighting systemic injustice.

What Feminist Recovery Could Look Like

• Participants imagine recovery rooted in equity and collective care.
• Universal Basic Income and adequate disability supports indexed to real costs of living.
• Reduced paperwork, less surveillance, and trust in disabled people.
• Accessible healthcare, housing, and education systems.
• Recognition that COVID-19 is ongoing and continues to disable people.
• A shift away from neoliberal individualism toward collective responsibility and care.

Reflections:

This episode underscores that feminist recovery must be grounded in disability justice and lived experience. Participants make clear that recovery is not about returning to pre-pandemic norms, but about transforming systems that continue to produce harm. Living well requires dignity, autonomy, safety, and community — conditions that cannot be achieved without structural change.Download the transcript

Parenting, caregiving,and isolation significantly shape experiences of wellbeing.

In this episode of Reimagining Disabled Futures, DAWN Canada continues its exploration of feminist economic recovery through a focus group conversation with women and gender-diverse people with disabilities. This episode is part of DAWN’s Feminist Economic Recovery Project, within the larger Mapping Our Future: A 10-Year Vision for Change for Women with Disabilities initiative.

Participants reflect on what it means to live well in the contextof disability, chronic illness, and systemic exclusion. The discussion surfaces the gap between survival and wellbeing, highlighting how housing insecurity, inaccessible transportation, rigid financial support programs, and constantsurveillance through disability systems undermine dignity and autonomy.

Across the conversation, participants emphasize that feminist recovery must go beyond COVID-19 recovery. It must address the structural conditions that make disabled people disproportionately housing- and food-insecure, whilecentring dignity, choice, community, and collective care.

Participants: Focus group participants from DAWN Canada’s Feminist Economic Recovery Project, representing diverse regions, disabilities, genders, and lived experiences.

Participants describe living well as more than meeting basic needs.

• Living well includes autonomy, dignity, security, rest, leisure, and community connection.
• Several participants note that “living well” feels out of reach when systems only allow for survival.
• Chronic illness and fluctuating disabilities complicate narrow definitions of wellness and productivity.

Housing is repeatedly identified as central to safety and dignity.

• Participants describe inaccessible housing, unaffordable rents, and long waitlists.
• Housing subsidies often fail to reflect real costs, forcing people to choose between rent and food.
• Institutional and congregate living arrangements are framed as non-solutions that remove autonomy and privacy.

Barriers to Accessing Essential Services - Participants share systemic barriers across:

• Transportation systems that remove individual choice and flexibility.
• Home care models that fail to account for fluctuating disabilities.
• Health systems that dismiss pain, particularly for women, racialized people, and gender-diverse participants.
• Immigration status and racism further compound exclusion from services.

Experiences with income assistance and disability programs reveal:

• Excessive paperwork, constant reviews, and fear of losing benefits.
• Restrictions on cohabitation that prevent partners from living together.
• Asset limits that make saving impossible and discourage part-time or flexible work.
• Medication and treatment coverage that excludes non-traditional or holistic care.

Participants highlight how:

• Housing insecurity increases vulnerability to gender-based violence.
• Financial dependence on partners undermines safety and feminist autonomy.
• Systems designed to “support” disabled people often reproduce harm and control.

Participants imagine recovery beyond existing systems.

• A guaranteed basic income indexed to the real cost of living.
• Housing that is accessible, affordable, and community-based.
• Flexible, part-time, and remote employment options.
• Reduced documentation, fewer hoops, and trust in disabled people’s decision-making.
• Investment in community organizations that support racialized and marginalized groups.
• A shift from profit-driven systems to people-centred care and joy.

This episode reinforces that feminist recovery must be rooted in disability justice. Participants make clear that recovery cannot be achieved through piecemeal reforms or surveillance-based programs. Living well requiresstructural change — including housing justice, income security, accessible care, and the right to live with dignity, connection, and choice.

The Feminist Economic Recovery Project explores how recovery strategies can be implemented through a feminist and disability justice lens.

Download the transcript.