'Institutionalized' Care in Ontario, Canada: A Complex Interaction of Institution, Gendered Disability and Aging

This paper is premised on Martha Fineman’s observation that societal institutions – together and separately - provide individuals with resilience in the face of our shared vulnerability. How do institutions interpret and meet the needs that are shaped by the intersection of gender, disability and aging? Intersectionality is a method for interrogating the institutional reproduction of inequality, whether at the level of the state, the family, or of legal structures more generally. Intersectional approaches look to forms of inequality that are routed through one another, and which cannot be untangled to reveal a single cause (Grabham, Herman, Cooper & Krisnadas, 2008). Long Term Care (LTC) is conceived as a publicly-funded institution that is of significance to a very specific group of older women – those who are “institutionalized” because of their impairments / disabilities and other factors. The research question is how do changes in the regulatory framework for the Ontario LTC sector (nursing homes) respond to the needs of older (and poorer) women with disabilities? The first part of the paper draws on the debates in the feminist disability studies (Carol Thomas, Jenny Morris) as well as Canadian disability scholarship (Michael Prince). The second part presents the case study, based on findings from document review and legal research. The last part provides my preliminary analysis of the LTC sector. I argue that while LTC (as institution created by law) can potentially play an important role in creating safeguards, options and opportunities for a wide array of individuals of diverse capacities / capabilities, the challenge to a more responsive state – as manifested in LTC – concern problem of addressing aging as a discrete policy without referencing other differences such as disability, gender and other differences.