Scoping review of women with disabilities’ livelihood occupation experiences: An equity perspective

BACKGROUND: Globally, persons with disabilities are faced with unemployment and reduced income opportunities. Barriers to employment tend to be severe for women with disabilities who occupy marginalized positions in labor markets. ‘Livelihood occupations’ are conceptualized for this review to denote everyday activities that are done for subsistence and survival, and to broaden presentations of activities normally termed ‘work’, ‘employment’, ‘job’ or ‘productivity’ that people do to earn money and non-monetary gain.

OBJECTIVE: This scoping review, undertaken as part of a broader interpretive phenomenological analysis of livelihood occupations of women with disabilities, maps research on the subject of livelihood occupations for women with disabilities.

METHODS: The Arksey and O’Malley framework and PRISMA extension for scoping reviews were utilized to guide the five stage scoping strategy used to screen and select sources. Data from selected sources were synthesized using deductive qualitative content analysis to fit experiential components into equity categories determined a-priori from the Equitable Total Rewards model, to determine if these experiences connote equity or lack thereof.

RESULTS: Nineteen sources, mainly from high income countries, are identified. Aspects of benefit and career inequity were largely evident in the experiences of the women across all sources.

CONCLUSION: There is considerable lack of research on experiences of livelihood occupations in low and middle income countries contexts justifying further research. Women with disabilities report experiencing inability to realize career goals and occupational choice.