The journey of Disabled women through UK Higher Education: using intersectionality to assess compounded inequality in a sexist and ableist system.

Although there is a variety of research examining Disabled students' success and experience
at university, Kutscher and Tuckwiller (2019) note there is a lack of intersectional
examination of disability and argue that research examining the intersections of disability,
for instance, with gender and 'race' is urgently needed. Consequently, the proposed study
will examine the intersection of gender and disability in UK HE students and its impacts. This
is because of the well evidenced and much researched disadvantages faced by women in UK
Higher Education (HE), as students and staff; the higher prevalence of women with Chronic
Illnesses (Dusenbery, 2018), and the issue of medical sexism making access to diagnoses
(which are needed to "evidence" disability) difficult for women (Dusenbery, 2018).
UK Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) have a legal duty under the Equality Act 2010 and
the Public Sector Equality Duty to ensure that access to their services is not limited by any of
nine protected characteristics (inclusive of Disability and Gender). Furthermore, they have
an ethical/moral duty to ensure equality of access, and this was incentivised when the UK
government introduced the "widening participation" agenda in the early 2000s (Connell-
Smith and Hubble, 2018).
There are issues beyond the academy that make this research particularly pressing. Hector
et al. (2020) argue that the support of Disabled students in the UK needs improvement, and
highlights an attainment gap for Disabled students (although they do not consider disability
intersectionality with gender). This suggests a need for research to understand these issues.