The DRM Guide to Disability Resources on the Internet: Sponsors

	DISABILITY RESOURCES ONLINE
	Monitoring, Reviewing and Reporting on Resources For Independent Living
	Updated 11/2008
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A Health Handbook For Women With Disabilities
by Jane Maxwell, Julia Watts Belser, and Darlena David
Hesperian Foundation, 2007. Softcover, 406 pages, $20.00. This book can be downloaded for free from the publisher at www.hesperian.org. It is also available for download to bookshare.org members.

If like me, you are a woman "of a certain age", you no doubt remember Our Bodies, Ourselves, the groundbreaking resource published by The Boston Women's Health Collective and what a practical and empowering volume it was when it hit the bookstores amid the first wave of feminism. If, like me, you, as a fellow woman with a disability, also remember how relatively little information there was in that particular book and others in a similar vein, that spoke to our needs, you will be gratified to read A Health Handbook For Women With Disabilities. In its own way, this compilation is even more empowering and inclusive than Our Bodies, Ourselves.
In this information-packed book, the authors have done an admirable job of addressing the needs of disabled women worldwide. While this handbook is not intended as a medical or rehabilitation text, the material contained within should serve to educate and empower disabled women while informing health care professionals, families, and society at large about the physical, sociocultural, and emotional needs of an international disabled sisterhood.
Although the topics covered are as varied as the book's intended audience, they nevertheless all speak to common life stages such as pregnancy and growing older, the financial, cultural, and architectural barriers to medical care, and the impact disability can have on all aspects of a woman's life. Not all subjects will be relevant to all readers, but there will definitely be some gem of wisdom for every woman with a disability who has access to this handbook.

-Reviewed by Sally Rosenthal


About the reviewer: A woman "of a certain age" and proud of every earned wrinkle, Sally Rosenthal is a former college librarian and occupational therapist who contributes frequently to print publications and this website in the areas of companion animals, working dogs, and disability.