Impact of Sexism

If bath men and women who are deaf experience education in the same schooling, and if gender socialization in these schools is less pronounced, one might think that Deaf women and men would have comparable vocational outcomes. Being deaf is in and of itself enough to create barriers to achievement of educational and vocational goals. Some Deaf advocates argue that it is not deafness but society which reduces opportunities; nevertheless being deaf is enough to reduce opportunities in a generalized sense. This is true for both men and women and, though the impact of gender on Deaf people have not been thoroughly researched, there is evidence to suggest that there are differential outcomes for men and women.

Research on sex stereotyping indicates that Deaf women experience a double whammy: "The combination of ineffective vocational counselling and isolation from the contemporary world of work leads to fewer choices and the resulting lower remuneration and higher unemployment. Therefore, while the Deaf individual surffers discrimination and limitations of job possibilities, the Deaf female endures a situation defined both by her deafness and her femaleness."¹¹Scott Brown suggests that sex is the most important predictor of variance income. Even taking into consideration the graduate and non graduates and higher degree recipients, Deaf women earned less than Deaf men across the board.¹²

Looking back at the 1880-1940 era of education of the Deaf, jobs for the Deaf were traditionally vocational in nature, including metalwork, wood working and printing (predominately occupations for men) and keypunch, which was one of the only occupational options for Deaf women. It was very common for hearing men to be in manual blue collar occupations and hearing women in white or pink collar occupations, such as secretarial jobs, nursing and teaching, which valued high verbal skills.

While it is clear that all Deaf children were restricted in their options due to inadequate education and low expectations, the choices for Deaf women were far less broad than those of Deaf men. This challenges the idea that Deaf men and women are simply deaf, with no impact of gender on their lives.

Stereotypes, myths and expectations based on disability, deafness or gender are applied to Deaf women in compounded ways. Deaf women deal with the stereotypes of submissiveness, inferiority and dependence as women as well as the labels associated with being a Deaf person. "Deaf women internalize these social expectations and have difficulties dealing with the role expectations of men in the Deaf community, especially if their personal views differ from cultural views on sex roles."¹³

Deaf women tell personal stories of sexual discrimination, sexual assault or violence, about having their vocational goals rejected or their academic course selections disallowed. In research about issues of importance to Deaf high school students, Larry Stewart categorized mental health issues including: reproduction issues, rape, sexually transmitted diseases and sexual abuse.¹⁴ Despite the fact that these issues are more clearly related to gender relations than to deafness, the results were not broken down by sex of respondent.