It was not until Bella Abzug's obituary(ies), that I learned, that the same speech quoted above, she strongly criticized the lack of wheelchair access at the conference. At the time, she was a wheelchair user. It's the only time I've seen mention of her comment. It was rarely mentioned that she was a wheelchair user in her last years. Also, Betty Friedan, "The Feminine Mystique", was a wheelchair user in her last years. I only know of that because the newsletter of the National Museum of Women in the Arts had a photo of Friedan sitting in her wheelchair in front of/below an Alice Neel self-portrait, as a visitor to the museum in Washington, DC, shortly before her death. As a wheelchair user, I am very aware of "erasing wheelchairs" from the media, just as a feminist, I am aware women being "erased" from history (artists*,too). I think it is a common myth that the wheelchair user would be "embarrassed", and it's is incorrect. (And no doubt, you have these archives of Jewish women in history to correct the record, and why I read it.) Problem: if women are omitted from source material, such as newspapers, magazines, few biographies written, it's hard to get enough data (such as Abzug, and the strong as-only-Bella Abzug could do criticism of inadequate wheelchair access at the Bejing International Women's Conference. *Germaine Greer's history of women omitted from art history, written about 3 decades ago, was "groundbreaking".
It was not until Bella Abzug's obituary(ies), that I learned, that the same speech quoted above, she strongly criticized the lack of wheelchair access at the conference. At the time, she was a wheelchair user. It's the only time I've seen mention of her comment. It was rarely mentioned that she was a wheelchair user in her last years. Also, Betty Friedan, "The Feminine Mystique", was a wheelchair user in her last years. I only know of that because the newsletter of the National Museum of Women in the Arts had a photo of Friedan sitting in her wheelchair in front of/below an Alice Neel self-portrait, as a visitor to the museum in Washington, DC, shortly before her death. As a wheelchair user, I am very aware of "erasing wheelchairs" from the media, just as a feminist, I am aware women being "erased" from history (artists*,too). I think it is a common myth that the wheelchair user would be "embarrassed", and it's is incorrect. (And no doubt, you have these archives of Jewish women in history to correct the record, and why I read it.) Problem: if women are omitted from source material, such as newspapers, magazines, few biographies written, it's hard to get enough data (such as Abzug, and the strong as-only-Bella Abzug could do criticism of inadequate wheelchair access at the Bejing International Women's Conference. *Germaine Greer's history of women omitted from art history, written about 3 decades ago, was "groundbreaking".