By Alliance member and lived experience advocate Phoebe Nagorcka-Smith
The 2024 theme of International Day of People with Disability, on 3 December, is ‘Amplifying the leadership of persons with disabilities for an inclusive and sustainable future’.
In this spirit, the Australian Women’s Health Alliance has supported me to produce this paper that explores the link between issues that I have both lived and have professional expertise in – brain injury, gender-based violence, and the impacts of systemic inaccessibility and sexism on women with disability and trauma.
It’s critical that Alliance members and lived experience advocates are recognised in the health system as key voices, to build evidence and inform policy and practice.
My work has always been informed by my lived experience, but the proximity isn’t always this close. The release of A Gendered Lens on Acquired Brain Injury comes at a difficult time for me, as I’ve been navigating many of the issues I’ve written about in this paper.
I’ve been trying to focus on rehabilitation, only partially funded through our under-resourced public system, and which took me over a decade to gain access to due to many reasons outlined in this brief.
However, this has been frustrated by my disability insurance body yet again denying my experience and attempting to block funding for medical and disability supports, after 14 years of consistent challenges from my brain injury. They called me to cancel my supports – with no notice, and not in the written format that I need for accessibility reasons – less than 24 hours after I was in court getting a family violence intervention order, despite knowing about my situation.
These experiences have been indescribably hard, but they’re also consistent with my broader lived experience of brain injury.
Like many women with a brain injury, I spent many years feeling isolated, that I was unique in struggling with my disability, that I didn’t deserve support, and that I must not be a reliable narrator of my own experience because the health, disability and employment systems were telling me I was wrong.
I now understand that there are many, many women with brain injury in Australia (including a significant number who likely don’t know they have a brain injury), that my experiences aren’t unique, and that a lack of knowledge about brain injury – and systemic sexism – are behind the chronic gaslighting and lack of support that many women with brain injury experience.
At the time of my injury, I would have given anything to know this – and for the systems and people around me to understand it, too.
So, this paper is an offering to people with brain injury, who would like to understand more about how gender, brain injury, and gender-based violence intersect.
It is also an appeal to people who love or work with people with brain injury and/or who have experienced gender-based violence, and who design systems that they interact with, to learn more, and do better.
Understanding the gendered nature of violence and brain injury is a critical first step. In addition to reading this, and other papers on the Women’s Health Hub, the Alliance’s Introduction to Gender-Responsive Health e-learning modules supports practitioners to translate recommendations into action.
This paper includes a range of other recommendations for government policy, practitioners, and research. The reference list and acknowledgements highlight further information about topics you may like to know more about.
Please read, share, and use what you learn from this paper to strengthen your work and advocacy.
Phoebe Nagorcka-Smith has worked in primary prevention for over a decade in policy, advocacy, health promotion, research and governance roles.
She has lived and professional expertise in gender-based violence, disability and women’s health.
Phoebe is proudly disabled, queer, and rural, and brings these perspectives to her work.
Content note
This paper discusses violence, including details about how specific acts of gendered violence can lead to injury and disability. This paper also discusses structural violence, child removal, medical sexism, and other forms of oppression. If you are affected by the issues discussed within the paper, and would like further information or support, please consider accessing Synapse Australia, 1800 RESPECT, Breathless, or Lifeline. More helplines are available below.
