Ordinary Women: Issues for Women with Learning Disabilities

This paper reviews some key issues for women with learning disabilities and those who work with them arguing that many of these are ‘ordinary’ women's issues which are exacerbated because they often remain unacknowledged. Services ignore gender more than sexuality leading to very atypical lifestyles for women with learning disabilities. The paper explores how women's needs around fitness and appearance, sexuality and sexual abuse, reproductive rights and experiences of motherhood and caring for others could be supported by services which were more willing to acknowledge that women with learning disabilities are ‘women first’.