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.

In this episode of Reimagining Disabled Futures, we explore feminist recovery through the lived experiences of women and gender-diverse people with disabilities participating in the Feminist Economic Recovery Project, part of Mapping Our Future: A 10-Year Vision for Change for Women with Disabilities.

Through a facilitated group conversation, participants reflect on what it means to live well, the systemic barriers they face in accessing healthcare, housing, transportation, home care, and financial supports, and what a truly feminist approach to recovery could look like beyond COVID-19. Their reflections challenge narrow definitions of wellness and recovery, centering dignity, choice, care, and collective responsibility.

This is the first of three special episodes sharing insights from focus group participants whose voices are shaping this national research.

Why This Conversation Matters

Feminist recovery cannot be separated from disability justice, economic security, and access to care. This conversation highlights how current systems often retraumatize, exclude, or exhaust disabled women and gender-diverse people — and why recovery must be reimagined as equity-focused, trauma-informed, and grounded in lived expertise.

The episode speaks directly to policymakers, service providers, researchers, advocates, and community members working toward systems that allow people not just to survive, but to live well.

Key Themes Explored

• Living well as more than survival: connection, creativity, choice, and balance

• Systemic barriers in healthcare, transportation, housing, and home care

• Medical gaslighting, misogyny, racism, ableism, and transphobia in institutions

• Financial precarity, disability benefits, CERB, ODSP, and bureaucratic harm

• Aging with disability and gaps in supports for older women

• Feminist recovery as equity, not a return to “normal”

• Trauma-informed, person-centred approaches to care and support

Notable Reflections

Participants describe living well as having autonomy over time, access to community and care, and the ability to make choices that honour their health and personhood. Many speak to the exhaustion of navigating systems that require constant proof of need, where trust is broken through dismissal, disbelief, and administrative violence.

Feminist recovery emerges as a collective responsibility — one that centres marginalized knowledge, invests in care infrastructure, addresses long-term impacts of COVID-19, and recognizes that what supports disabled women ultimately strengthens society as a whole.

About the Feminist Economic Recovery Project

The Feminist Economic Recovery Project examines how women and gender-diverse people with disabilities access essential services, housing, financial supports, and care. It centres lived experience to inform policy recommendations and systems change, with a focus on addressing gender-based violence, economic hardship, and systemic exclusion.

Download the transcript.

About DAWN Canada

DAWN Canada is a national feminist, cross-disability human rights organization working to end poverty, isolation, discrimination, and violence experienced by women, girls, and gender-diverse people with disabilities and/or who are Deaf.

DAWN’s work spans research, education, policy, and advocacy, grounded in disability justice, intersectional feminism, and community-led knowledge.

Reimagining Disabled Futures Podcast

A Podcast by (DisAbled Women Network) DAWN Canada that focuses on the intersection of disability, gender and social justice.

Show Notes: Episode 2 - How Disability Justice and Abolition Intersect Within

Episode Summary:This episode discusses incarceration, ableism, systemic violence and experiences of disablement within the criminal legal system. Listener discretion is advised.

Hosts: (DAWN Canada):

Erin Dekker, Former Junior Research Associate

Nashwa Lina Khan, Senior Research Associate

Guests (Disability Justice Network of Ontario (DJNO):

Pam Reañ, Prison Project Lead, they/them

Brad Evoy Executive Director, they/them

Key Topics Covered in the Episode:

• Understanding Disability Justice and Abolition:

– Why DJNO identifies as an abolitionist organization.

– How prisons reproduce disablement, racial violence and colonial harm.

• Sites of Disablement:

– Isolation, poor healthcare and segregation as forms of violence.

– Most incarcerated people leave with new or worsened disabilities.

• Carcerality Beyond Prisons:

– How punishment logics shape schools, long-term care and housing systems.

– Links between local and global sites of disablement (e.g., Palestine).

• Community Care and Prevention:

– Housing and mental-health supports as alternatives to incarceration.

– Community accountability and solidarity as core to disability justice.

About the Disability Justice Network of Ontario (DJNO): Website: https://djno.ca

The Disability Justice Network of Ontario builds a world where disabled people are free to be and free to hold systems to account. Based in Hamilton, DJNO organizes fordisability justice through advocacy, education and abolitionist action.

DJNO leads initiatives like the Enabling Justice Toolkit (https://enablingjustice.com), a resource supporting youth and adults navigating the criminal legal system, and programs that challenge ableism, racism and incarceration.

About DAWN Canada: Website: https://dawncanada.net/

DAWN (DisAbled Women’s Network) Canada is a national feminist cross-disability human rights organization that works to address systems of oppression. The organization is dedicated to promoting the rights and inclusion of women, girls and gender-diverse people with disabilities. Their work focuses on addressing systemic discrimination, advocating for equality, and advancing social, economic, and politicalinclusion. DAWN Canada provides research, programming, and advocacy initiatives rooted in intersectionality, emphasizing the unique experiences of Indigenous, Black, racialized, and LGBTQ2S+ individuals within the disability community.

Additional Resources & Info:

If you’re interested in learning more about DJNO’s advocacy and education work, visit https://djno.ca.

DJNO Offers:

1. Advocacy and Abolition Resources

2. Community Education Programs

3. Support Lines for Justice-Involved DisabledPeople

4. Toolkits like Enabling Justice tonavigate the legal system

Reimagining Disabled Futures Podcast

A Podcast by (DisAbled Women Network) DAWN Canada that focuses on the intersection of disability, gender andsocial justice.

Show Notes: Episode 1 - Building Sustainable Livelihoods| Season 1

“Living well is more than surviving” – Nashwa Lina Khan

Episode Summary:

In this episode, we talk about the Sustainable Livelihoods framework and how it helps people living on low incomes. Our guests explain how this approach is different from other poverty programs because it focuses on people’s strengths instead of their problems. We hear stories about the barriers people face when trying to get housing, food, money, andhealthcare. We also learn what “living well” means to different people and how personal and systemic issues affect their well-being.

Hosts: (DAWN Canada):

• Erin Dekker, Former Junior Research Associate

• Nashwa Lina Khan, Senior Research Associate

Guests (Sustainable Livelihoods Canada, SLC):

• Vibhuti Mehra

• Mary Ferguson

Key Topics Covered in the Episode:

Understanding Sustainable Livelihoods (SL):

o What is the SL framework?

o How does it differ from traditional povertyreduction strategies?

Challenges & Strengths-Based Perspectives:

o Exploring how people with low incomes navigate their daily lives and unique challenges they face.

o How SLC is reframing issues from deficit-based thinking to a strengths-based approach to promote resilience and stability.

Community Insights from Interviews:

o Addressing obstacles to accessing housing, food, financial benefits, healthcare, and other essential resources.

o Sharing experiences from community members and participants' lived experiences.

What does “living well” mean?

o Understanding individual and systemic factors that contribute to overall well-being.

About Sustainable Livelihoods Canada: Website: https://slcanada.org/

Sustainable Livelihoods Canada (SLC) works to support organizations and communities in adopting and implementing the Sustainable Livelihoods (SL) framework. They specialize in training, planning, coaching, and evaluation services to improve social and economic inclusion for marginalized individuals and communities.

SLC's expertise areas include: Training and Education: Teaching frontline staff and organizations about the SL framework and how to operationalize it effectively.

Evaluation and Research: Conducting evaluations to identify outcomes, assess multi-site research initiatives, and improve program implementation.

Knowledge Mobilization: Sharing insights and strategies to ensure research and evaluation findings create real-world change

Community Social & Economic Engagement: Strategies thatprioritize inclusion, poverty reduction, and systems change for marginalized groups.

About DAWN Canada: Website: https://dawncanada.net/

DAWN (DisAbled Women’s Network) Canada is a national feminist cross-disability human rights organization that works to address systems of oppression. The organization is dedicated to promoting the rights and inclusion of women, girls and gender-diverse people with disabilities.

About the Feminist Recovery Project:

The Feminist Recovery Project is one of DAWN Canada’s key research projects and explores how recovery strategies can be implemented through a feminist lens. This project examines the intersection of gender, economic equity, and social inclusion, focusing on rebuilding economic security for marginalized groups impacted by systemic inequities, including gender-based violence and economic exclusion. The Feminist Recovery Project seeks to:

• Highlight community resilience through narratives.

• Explore new models of social investment and community recovery strategies to combat systemic barriers and promote gender equity.
• Center the lived experiences of women, gender-diverse individuals, and communities withintersecting identities to inform recovery efforts.