Disability, Gender, and ‘Ideal Work’: A Crip-Centered Approach to Intersectional Stigma

Ideal work has been conceptually tied to systems of ableism and sexism. This paper examines how intersectional stigma communicatively constitutes the organizational disablement of disabled and/or neurodivergent women in the workplace. Drawing on theorizing around stigma, intersectionality, and crip theory, the study analyzes 18 semi-structured interviews with disabled and/or neurodivergent working women across the United States. Findings show that stigma operates as a constitutive mechanism that organizes workplace marginalization and disablement through three interlocking forms of misalignment: (a) normative misalignment, (b) participatory misalignment, and (c) epistemic misalignment. Together, these mechanisms illuminate how ableism, sexism, and neuronormativity sustain dominant understandings of ideal work.