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A Female Disease: The Unintentional Gendering Of Fibromyalgia Social Security Claims, Dara Purvis
A Female Disease: The Unintentional Gendering Of Fibromyalgia Social Security Claims, Dara Purvis
Journal Articles
Social Security disability claims are not supposed to be decided based on the gender of the applicant. Reliance on the apparently neutral mechanism of clinical medical evidence, however, has a disproportionate impact on women bringing disability claims based on fibromyalgia. Recognizing and identifying disability has been delegated by Congress and the Social Security Administration almost entirely to physicians, based upon a misguided and mistaken belief that clinical medical evidence evaluated by a trained physician will answer with certainty whether an individual claimant is capable of working. Fibromyalgia, a diffuse syndrome characterized by excess pain that is overwhelmingly diagnosed in women …
How The Biological/Social Divide Limits Disability And Equality, Martha T. Mccluskey
How The Biological/Social Divide Limits Disability And Equality, Martha T. Mccluskey
Journal Articles
What is disability - a biological or social condition? In the conventional equality frameworks, the division between biology and social identity puts disability at the bottom of the formal equality hierarchy, but at the top of the substantive equality hierarchy. Compared with race and then gender, disability deserves the least protection against formal discrimination, on the theory that disadvantages are based on real and relevant functional differences more than on suspect social judgments. But turning to substantive equality, disability’s supposed greater biological basis justifies affirmative accommodation of difference, compared to the social differences of race, with gender in the middle …