Disabled women, violence, and the politics of the body in Malta

Abstract

This paper analyses violence against disabled women in Malta through the lens of feminist disability theory, conceptualising abuse as an embodied and structurally produced phenomenon rather than as isolated acts of victimisation. Drawing on qualitative research with frontline professionals and advocates, the study examines how violence emerges at the intersection of gendered power relations, ableism, dependency regimes, and epistemic injustice. Findings show that abuse often takes cumulative and holistic forms, including emotional degradation, financial control, sexual exploitation, coercive restrictions on movement, and physical violence. Emotional and psychological abuse appear particularly pervasive, gradually reshaping women’s embodied sense of self and reinforcing internalised narratives of incapacity and unworthiness. Financial abuse, especially through guardianship arrangements and control of disability pensions, further restricts autonomy and entrenches dependency. Institutional responses may inadvertently reproduce ableist assumptions through procedures that question the credibility of disabled women’s testimonies or impose inaccessible legal processes. Rather than framing disabled women as inherently vulnerable, the paper argues that vulnerability is socially produced through legal, institutional, and cultural arrangements that regulate sexuality, mobility, and decision-making. At the same time, advocacy practices such as accompaniment, rights education, and resistance to unnecessary incapacitation illustrate forms of embodied resistance that challenge these structures and foreground disabled women as epistemic agents.