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

尽管有各种各样的研究调查残疾学生在大学的成功和经历，但Kutscher和Tuckwiller（2019）指出，缺乏对残疾的交叉研究，并认为迫切需要研究残疾与性别和“种族”的交叉。因此，拟议的研究将检查英国高等教育学生中性别和残疾的交集及其影响。这是因为在英国高等教育（HE）中，作为学生和教职员工，女性面临着充分证明和大量研究的劣势；女性慢性病患病率较高（Dusenbery, 2018），以及医疗性别歧视问题使得女性难以获得诊断（这是“证明”残疾所需的）（Dusenbery, 2018）。根据《2010年平等法》和《公共部门平等义务》，英国高等教育机构（HEIs）有法律义务确保获得其服务的机会不受任何受保护特征（包括残疾和性别）的限制。此外，他们在伦理/道德上有责任确保机会平等，当英国政府在21世纪初引入“扩大参与”议程时，这一点得到了激励（康奈尔-史密斯和哈勃，2018）。学术界之外的一些问题使得这项研究尤为紧迫。Hectoret等人（2020）认为，英国对残疾学生的支持需要改进，并强调了残疾学生的成就差距（尽管他们没有考虑残疾与性别的交叉性）。这表明需要研究来理解这些问题。

Although there is a variety of research examining Disabled students' success and experienceat university, Kutscher and Tuckwiller (2019) note there is a lack of intersectionalexamination of disability and argue that research examining the intersections of disability,for instance, with gender and 'race' is urgently needed. Consequently, the proposed studywill examine the intersection of gender and disability in UK HE students and its impacts. Thisis because of the well evidenced and much researched disadvantages faced by women in UKHigher Education (HE), as students and staff; the higher prevalence of women with ChronicIllnesses (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 andthe Public Sector Equality Duty to ensure that access to their services is not limited by any ofnine protected characteristics (inclusive of Disability and Gender). Furthermore, they havean ethical/moral duty to ensure equality of access, and this was incentivised when the UKgovernment 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. Hectoret al. (2020) argue that the support of Disabled students in the UK needs improvement, andhighlights an attainment gap for Disabled students (although they do not consider disabilityintersectionality with gender). This suggests a need for research to understand these issues.