Gender & Sexuality Studies 2026

Abstract

This paper examines cure seeking as a gendered form of childhood violence in the lives of Yoruba girls with disabilities. It draws on six months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted with women with disabilities in Lagos Nigeria.

In a context of inadequate disability services I argue that indigenous diagnostic systems and healing cosmologies mediate biomedical uncertainty and produce a matrix of structural interpersonal and intrapersonal violence. Within Yoruba gender norms that emphasise obedience respectability and moral discipline for girls childhood impairment heightens expectations of compliance making disabled girls particularly vulnerable to intrusive practices framed as healing.

Participants described interventions ranging from physiotherapy to ritual beatings with palm fronds enforced fasting confinement river washings and herbal regimens. These practices discipline the body normalise pain as moral correction and erode trust in caregiving relationships. Cure seeking therefore becomes an early architecture of harm where structural exclusion interpersonal coercion and intrapersonal self blame converge.

Using a life course ethnographic lens I trace these dynamics into adolescence and adulthood revealing enduring effects including internalised stigma diminished self worth and heightened vulnerability to intimate partner violence. Policy failures exacerbate these harms disability legislation lacks enforcement child protection systems overlook culturally framed violence GBV interventions rarely include disabled girls and national data systems continue to lack disaggregated data on children with disabilities.

Biography

TBA