Molly Wiesman

There is a well-known image from a few years ago of Stephanie Woodward where she, in her wheelchair, is being removed from the US Capital by security guards after protesting cuts to Medicaid outside of then-Senate Leader Mitch McConnell’s office.

Stephanie Woodward is a prominent activist in the disability community, and one with a multifaceted life. Woodward is a lawyer, and one of the founders of the Disability EmpowHer Network, an organization dedicated to inspiring leadership in girls and women with disabilities. Her activism began at an early age. She was inspired to go into law when she was still a young girl due to an incident involving the room where her music class was held at her school. There was a ramp leading up to the room, and her teacher observed that it was “very dangerous” for her to be on the ramp because she could hurt the other students if her wheelchair slid down the ramp. When Woodward told her dad this, he was livid. He went to her school the next day to talk to the principal, but when told the principal was busy, he insisted he would “call the ADA.” Stephanie didn’t know what that meant, so her father explained the ADA, telling her to “think about it like a bunch of lawyers in wheelchairs who don’t take no shit.”

Woodward would more clearly see the lack of accessibility for people with disabilities in the United States when she studied abroad in Ireland during college. She was struck by how much more accessible Ireland was than the US, particularly its bus system. She later learned that Dublin was so accessible because, in part, many people in the Irish government had been soldiers who endured injuries in the conflict between Ireland and Northern Ireland. During her time in Ireland, she started to investigate internships back in the US that would allow her to learn more about the disability community. Woodward interned at an independent living center when she was nineteen and was inspired by the people she saw with disabilities making important decisions while taking care of their own needs, and it taught her not to be apologetic for who she was. What would ultimately cement her decision to pursue law was the offer of an internship in Senator Tom Harkin’s office through the American Association of People with Disabilities in 2009. During that time, she became increasingly aware of the issues affecting the disability community, and she decided to apply to law school.

As she began her career as a lawyer, Woodward became increasingly involved with the disability rights movement. Woodward observed a lack of female representation in leadership roles in the disability community. She felt that although the importance of the role of women in the disability community was often overlooked, as a woman with a disability she still felt empowered. “I don’t have to apoligize. I don’t have to try to be nondisabled. I don’t have to try to be a man, I can be a disabled woman and I can kick ass,” she states. She didn’t have disabled women role models until adulthood: “The disability community and the disability rights movement was a white man’s game for so long, and we forget not only the woman with physical disabilities who were marching . . . but other women with and without disabilities who were serving as attendants, who were helping to make sure they could get out there because they got dressed that morning, they got to eat, and it was women helping them.” She feels that more respect needs to be paid to the many women who serve as attendants and caregivers to those with disabilities.

She observes that Yoshiko Dart, wife of Justin Dart, was often overlooked as a woman who played an important role in the passage of the ADA. Justin Dart served as the chairperson for the National Council on Disability, and organized a cross-country bus tour to gather stories from people with disabilities that would ultimately influence passage of the ADA. Stephanie explains that Yoshiko traveled with Dart to every state in the U.S. to gather testimony from people with disabilities, yet Yoshiko’s role in the movement is often overlooked.

The lack of representation of female leadership in the disability rights movement led Woodward, along with her friend and fellow disability rights activist Leah Smith, to found the Disability EmpowHer Network (DEN), after seeing a lack of female leaders in nonprofit disability organizations. “I was predominantly mentored by men in the disability community,” she says. After doing her research, she found that there was a lack of statistical data about women with disabilities in leadership positions, leading her to also investigate high school graduation and employment rates for people with disabilities. She believes that giving girls with disabilities leadership skills from a young age will be beneficial to them, saying, “We can’t help women with disabilities become leaders if we don’t start when they’re much younger, because by the time you’re eighteen or twenty, you may have already started to believe those internalized, ableists things that people put on you, that you’re not capable, that you can’t do things.” She adds that statistics show that students are more likely to graduate high school when a relationship with a mentor lasts at least one year and that girls with disabilities are more in need of role models than boys with disabilities because “there’s less visibility of successful disabled women and there are more socially sanctioned roles for disabled women.” Woodward observes that chances of employment increase when students graduate high school, and they go up even higher for college graduates. She also makes the important observation that the role mentors play in the lives of young women allows them to see greater opportunities for themselves in their futures.

One of the mentorship programs for young women offered by DEN is a week-long camping experience that gives girls with disabilities ages thirteen to seventeen the opportunity to learn about disaster preparedness as well as leadership skills. DEN does this through facilitating a skills-building camp, a year-long project concerning disaster preparedness and continuing support for the girls going forward. Another program offered by DEN is a letter from a role model for girls ages eight to eighteen where women with disabilities offer life advice to girls with disabilities.

The cuts to Medicaid that Woodward protested outside of Mitch McConnell’s office in 2017 would have more than likely forced people living with disabilities into nursing homes, when because of their existing Medicaid coverage, they were able to receive care in their homes and remain in their communities. Woodward observes that institutional bias for people with disabilities still exists, even though it’s been found to be less expensive for disabled people to live in communities.

She attributes some of the cause of institutional bias to the Industrial Revolution, because prior to the then all members of a family, including those with disabilities, had jobs, making it possible for families to support them. With the onset of the Industrial Revolution, there were no longer jobs for those with disabilities, resulting in them being placed in institutions. She believes continuing deinstitutionalization will need to be influenced by stories of the success of people with disabilities living independently in the community with the support of attendant services.

Woodward says there is a continuing institutional bias to place people with disabilities in nursing homes because Medicaid is mandated to pay for nursing home facilities, but it is only optional for it to pay for community-based services. “I’m hoping that COVID has at least exposed to some people the danger of nursing facilities, that the disability community has been, not just been preaching about, but literally shouting at the top of our lungs about for the past thirty years.”

She also observes that she doesn’t think people, particularly legislators, understand the harm of institutionalized settings until someone close to them suffers from the negative consequences of being in one. Speaking of institutionalized settings, she states “I’m hoping that the rest of the world now sees that they’re not just dangerous because of COVID—they’re dangerous because of neglect, because of abuse, because of lack of autonomy, because of loss of independence. Like I, as a disabled person, can still be independent in the community even if I have attendant services. I can’t be when you lock me behind closed doors.”

Woodward credits acceptance for marginalized groups to positive portrayals of other marginalized communities, such as the LGBTQIA community and to the influence of the media. She credits shows like Will & Grace with cultivating more acceptance of this marginalized group. Woodward wishes there were more positive portrayals of people with disabilities in the media, such as the show Speechless, which ran on ABC from 2016 to 2019 featuring as its main character JJ, a teenager with cerebral palsy who was nonverbal and had a personal attendant. Woodward believes shows such as Speechless had a positive influence on people’s opinions about people with disabilities living in the community with the aid of attendants.

Woodward’s work as a member of the disability community revolving around women and girls has instilled the belief in a younger generation of girls with disabilities that they, too, can fight unapologetically for what they believe in. The role of women in the disability rights movement is often unacknowledged, yet Woodward is a perfect example of female power in the movement. Her work has been the inspiration for many girls and women to take pride in their disability identity.

For more information about the Disability EmpowHer Network, please visit
http://www.disabilityempowhernetwork.org