Enhancing Agency by Listening and Hearing to Enhance Capacity of the Most Marginalised in New Zealand: Our Respective Journeys

Abstract

In this chapter Louise details her engagement in NZ prisons, and in a linked vignette, Aroha details her own journey to enhance the capabilities of those suffering hearing loss. Aroha gives her story of enhancing agency by listening and hearing (https://archive.org/details/IFHOHPaperToLink_20181003).

Together the authors offer data combined with reflection that shows the underlying social dynamics that enable marginalisation to flourish. They identify: multiple levels of marginalisation experienced by a New Zealand woman of Maori descent and of a New Zealand woman of European descent.

Both the authors are living with the impact of sensory hearing loss, e.g. gender, cultural and disability and health-care access. We discuss how in-depth marginalisation caused by barriers to health-care access enabling hearing loss identification narrows the applicability of the Martha Nussbaum’s human capabilities approach. We also discuss how the application of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) upholds the implementation of rehabilitation through technology thereby overcoming gender, cultural and disability caused marginalisation of Maori and European women living in New Zealand. By applying both CEDAW and the CRPD, the wider application of the Martha Nussbaum human capabilities approach then becomes possible.