Alarming statistics regarding women with episodic disabilities and the workplace, two powerful stories from women with lived experience, and the new leading-edge program being led by Realize to create positive change.
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Learn more about Realize Canada.
Learn more about WAGE.
Realize's Workplace Disclosure Decision Guide (mentioned by guest Ingrid Palmer)
Thank you to our guests this episode for their expertise and generous sharing of their stories.
Realize Canada fosters positive change for people living with episodic disabilities.
Credits:
Writer, producer, host: Shaun Proulx
Audio and video editor: John Mackie
Graphic design: Alexandria Ditner
Special thanks to Addison Brash for their valued assistance in making this episode happen.
Executive Producers: Roger Musselman, Kate Murzin, and Janet London for Realize Canada
The Realize Podcast is sponsored by the Government of Canada.
[Addison Brash]
8 million. The number of people in Canada who have at least one disability. 27% of the population.
3.8 million. The number of people in Canada who have reported having an episodic disability. This is a type of disability that is inconsistent, defined by fluctuating periods and degrees of illness and wellness.
Women experience higher rates of episodic disability. In the workplace, most women are expected to behave kindly, be caring, soft and submissive, overly friendly, open, indirect, and non-assertive. They are expected to be a team player, accept gender-related microaggressions that objectify them, make domestic assumptions and or question competence and credibility.
87 cents. The amount women in the workplace earn for every dollar earned by men. A wage gap of 13%.
$2.22. The average hourly wage gap between people with and without disabilities. This gap is even larger for BIPOC and disabled women. Women with disability are subjected to disability-related microaggressions from behavioral to verbal and environmental in nature.
The percentage of women with disabilities occupying leadership roles in Canada, 0.2%. I'm ShawnProulx, and this is the Realize podcast, nurturing potential inclusion and belonging.
[Shawn Proulx]
The podcast dedicated to exploring the strength, adaptability, and determination of individuals facing the ever-changing landscape of episodic disabilities. I'm sure you agree, the numbers you just heard are staggering. But statistics only tell us so much.
Behind every number is a person trying to navigate a workplace, a body, a system, and often a world that was simply not designed with them in mind. For women living with episodic disabilities, that challenge is layered. There is the unpredictability of illness itself.
There is the pressure to mask, the pressure to perform, the pressure to prove. And then there is the reality that many women with disabilities are also navigating. Sexism, racism, poverty, stigma, fear around disclosure, and a workplace culture that is still too often sees accommodation as burden instead of basic humanity.
Today, we're going to hear from women living these realities. People who know firsthand what it means to budget sick days, hide pain, fight to be believed, and struggle for access to leadership, stability, and dignity. First up is writer, peer support worker, and disability advocate, Emily Ava Gillespie.
They are an author, disability activist, and self-described professional daydreamer. A recipient of Nipissing University's 2021 Dr. James Jamieson Influential Alumni Award, they hold degrees in gender equality and social justice and critical disability studies. Emily has spent more than 15 years working and volunteering in the disability community as an activist, researcher, facilitator, and peer supporter.
They are the author of the novel Dancing with Ghosts, co-editor of Mighty, an anthology of disabled superheroes, and most recently released the novel Wait With Me in 2025. Emily, welcome to The Realized Podcast. How are you today?
[Emily Gillespie]
I'm pretty good. Thanks so much for having me.
[Shawn Proulx]
Absolutely. I think you've got such an interesting story, and I wonder if you could start by talking to us a bit about what you do professionally, and as well a bit about your episodic disabilities as much as you're comfortable sharing.
[Emily Gillespie]
Sure. So I have a day job. I work in mental health.
I'm a peer support worker, so I work at a community center running programs, and then I support clients one-on-one with their mental health. In addition to that, I also do freelance work, including disability-related research. I'm a creative writer, so I teach creative writing, and I just had a new novel called Wait With Me come out recently.
[Shawn Proulx]
Oh, congratulations. You're very busy.
[Emily Gillespie]
Yeah, but I mentioned all these things because they all kind of link back to my career and disability focus. The novel was an exploration of navigating the emergency mental health system, so that was kind of my piece of storytelling and advocacy. My teaching creative writing has all been with different disability organizations throughout Canada, so all the different pieces of my career, even though they seem like they might be disjointed, do relate back to working with disability community.
[Shawn Proulx]
You have lived experience, and you also work in disability as well. Talk to us a little bit about that intersection.
[Emily Gillespie]
While mental health is an episodic disability, I have other episodic disabilities as well. I have migraines, for instance, and endometriosis. Within the mental health field, mental health is understood, but bringing in my lived experience and me trying to navigate my health when I'm experiencing other episodic disabilities as well.
[Shawn Proulx]
That's a huge challenge.
[Emily Gillespie]
Yeah. Oh, for sure. Sorry, there's many pieces in that question, but to get back to the first question you asked, my lived experience isn't everybody's, right?
One person with a disability doesn't always have exact same experience, but I can sometimes help people feel seen, people feel understood. Sometimes you can help people brainstorm solutions to their problems because you have that unique insight, you know?
[Shawn Proulx]
You said something to me when we did our pre-interview. You had two sick days left, and you were budgeting your sick days.
[Emily Gillespie]
I still have two sick days left.
[Shawn Proulx]
So you decided not to spend them, but you wanted to maybe take that day off, but you didn't know if tomorrow would be worse. So you weren't sure if you should spend it, that day off, that sick day or not. And that's something that I think a lot of people with disability, episodic disability especially, go through, and I wonder if you could speak to that a little bit.
[Emily Gillespie]
I don't have an answer. I'm still, I said I was good at the beginning of this, but, you know, I'm not great at really navigating my health this week. And it's really hard because with episodic disability, you're kind of trying to forecast, hey, is this the worst day I'm going to have this month?
Should I spend it? But you never know what your budget is. You never know if the next day is going to be worse.
I can take unpaid days, which I will, you know. I'm lucky that I'm in a financial position that is not going to break me, but I would rather not. But yeah, just trying to kind of make decisions when you don't have all the facts.
You know, all the facts about my body. And then I'm frustrated with my body for being unpredictable too, right? Which I don't want to shake with those frustrations.
To be clear too, it's not, you know, my specific job I'm frustrated with at all. It's just that is how jobs are set up in general, that you get a certain number of sick days. You know, last year I broke an ankle and then there's a certain like, hey, here's a two month timeline and then I'll be better.
But with something like my episodic disability and the migraines and the fatigue I'm navigating right now, it comes and goes so much that I can't say, oh, I'm going to take two months off and that'll be better because that's not the nature of it. And then I put more pressure. But yeah, when you have limited time, when I have two sick days, there's huge pressure to use them when I need them the most, you know?
[Shawn Proulx]
Who puts more pressure on you, yourself or the workplace?
[Emily Gillespie]
Oh, definitely myself. But I would actually pick a third thing into the medical system that I put huge pressure on myself to be able to show up, to be able to show up and do the standard of work I want to do, you know, to show up and not have brain fog or not be in too much pain.
[Shawn Proulx]
You even did it coming into this podcast to ask you how you were and you said you were good.
[Emily Gillespie]
Yeah, I'm sitting here with my fidget toys and my heat pack, you know, timing out how long this is that I could do it. So even in disability accommodating spaces, I still find myself experiencing pressure and maybe it's coming from within or different parts of society to maintain a phase of rationalism that, you know, you didn't dictate that. I just.
[Shawn Proulx]
It's almost like it's a self-imposed pressure. Only the pressure that you're imposing on yourself is because of what society is putting the pressure on you to do and be.
[Emily Gillespie]
Yes. And there is more as a I'm OK with outing myself here, but as somebody who navigates autism, as somebody who has mental health and chronic pain, being out about all of those is extremely vulnerable. So sometimes it's about society.
Sometimes it's about wanting to be seen as professional. And sometimes it's about not wanting to have someone look you in the eye and be like, are you OK today? Because you're not up for those emotional conversations.
[Shawn Proulx]
And you try to.
[Emily Gillespie]
Sometimes it's a bit of boundary setting, you know, can I go back to one of the conversations we were having? I wanted to acknowledge. So I do some speaking work with realize and I've done it elsewhere as well about my experiences with episodic disabilities in the workplace, as mentioned in this talk.
And I think it's really cool. Like I got to talk to HR departments last week, Ingrid from realize that I went into UFT.
[Shawn Proulx]
Who is coming up on the podcast after you, actually.
[Emily Gillespie]
Oh, OK, cool. So I was going to say that I absolutely love my lived experience in those moments because I get to say, you know, this is what I want to tell future employers or this is what I would tell graduating students. So being able to take the pieces I've learned and pass them on.
So, yeah, it's hard not reinforcing some of these narratives as well, like I did even today and saying I was OK.
[Shawn Proulx]
Yeah.
[Emily Gillespie]
So thank you very much for unpacking that.
[Shawn Proulx]
No problem. Of course. I want to talk about accommodations, which is such a key part of this picture.
You said in our pre-interview, you've never gone somewhere with people coming to you with ideas on how to accommodate you. You've always had to be the advocate for yourself.
[Emily Gillespie]
Yes. Yeah.
[Shawn Proulx]
Can you tell us a bit more about that, what that's like, how that hinders you, and then what it's like to have to try and get those accommodations? Without anyone ever suggesting that maybe you could have some. Why do you have to be first all the time?
[Emily Gillespie]
Sometimes I was very hesitant to ask for accommodations and have the disability conversation because, you know, I had short contracts that come up for renewal. So I often would be discriminated against. Sometimes...
[Shawn Proulx]
It's a heavy burden to live with.
[Emily Gillespie]
Going back a few jobs ago, sometimes I'd face pushback when I needed accommodations. I remember in one research job, I didn't say it was because of disability, but I asked for clarification on a project and I'm being told, quote, I'm a smart cookie that I could figure it out. And that really, it was meant as a compliment that like I have, I don't think she meant any harm or ableism by it.
I think she meant like, I believe in your powers, but I was confused and had just needed a rewording.
[Shawn Proulx]
The taking on maybe the smart cookie part, which is kind of condescending.
[Emily Gillespie]
It was, it was. Because of disability, sometimes it takes me longer to do things. Even in disability spaces, like all my jobs have been in disability spaces, but I've had researchers that I work with say, no, this is only going to take so many hours.
And I'll say, oh, actually, I think this is more realistic and give them my numbers, guess on hours and be told no, that you can do it in less time. And this is within the disability community too. So then it really silences me.
I was, had a office at a nonprofit that was, you know, huge flat office. So all the desks were open concept and I was in the corner, which is easier for me to focus because of my disabilities. And one day for like a office social, we decided to rearrange all the desks and I was put between the secretary and the ED.
And I very nicely using all my social skills said that I could focus better if I was in the corner versus in the center of the office. And I was told, no, just leave it and give it a try. And I bring up this example because where I was in the first place was the best accommodation.
And it wasn't something that caused anyone any money where my desk was, you know? So I was just viewed as being inflexible. That job went on another few months.
They talked over me the whole time. And I did less work. Yeah, that was the end of a job.
It was a job contract. And I did, you know, it makes you really hesitant to speak up when you need other accommodations.
[Shawn Proulx]
But you don't know what accommodations you need until you get there. On day one, you don't know. For example, you've got to be there for a while, see what the structure is like of the work you're doing and the environment.
You've described and painted a picture of what your experience is like as somebody with disability. Now let's add in the fact, and this is the topic at hand, women with disability in the workplace. What does being a woman add into the mix here for you and your experience?
[Emily Gillespie]
Well, I've talked a lot, too, doing these reflections about how because of disability, I never feel I climbed the corporate ladder. And I think that's interesting, too, with women, how, especially in caring roles, we're often at the bottom of the pay pyramids, thinking about who's viewed as professional, thinking about sick days, thinking about networking things which might be at my realm breach because of my disabilities. I really do think as a disabled woman, there's kind of gatekeeping on how high I can climb as a disabled person.
And Toronto, that means how high above the poverty line you can climb. So I feel like entry-level positions as a disabled person, I can do. But the leadership positions, which I feel I'd be great at, you know, what is opening more leadership and those higher paying positions.
I often think about leadership. I every time I come across someone, a boss, a mentor, I'm constantly thinking about being one of those leadership positions. I don't know, not unless there is way more sick days or like, what does it look like adding accommodations where people can actually apply for the higher jobs, you know?
[Shawn Proulx]
It's actually really insidious because the society we have now where workplaces are concerned don't support the idea of accommodating people with disability, nevermind putting them in positions of leadership. And so that teaches the rest of us with episodic disabilities that we are not worthy. And so don't strive for it.
Don't dream of it. Don't apply for it.
[Emily Gillespie]
And I think a lesson, and I'm not saying anybody taught me, definitely not my current workplace, but the lesson I think I was showing too in hiding my disabilities today was it's okay to show up and be disabled as long as you're not too disabled, as long as you're not out about it, as long as it's not disruptive, you know? So that pressure to, if you want to be in the workplace, you can have the lowest jobs and you can hide your disability, you know?
[Shawn Proulx]
How do programs like WAGE create change for a woman with episodic disability in the workplace?
[Emily Gillespie]
I think it's great to have spaces where people can think about what hiring disabled folks looks like, what accommodations like best practices for accommodations, having those conversations, thinking about what accommodations look like, thinking about inclusion, thinking about gender and wage gaps, because there's two wage gaps. There's the wage gap disabled folks experience if they're even working, and then there's wage gaps that women, especially LGBT community face. So acknowledging that, learning from the community, having HR professionals and whatnot, knowing that they don't necessarily have all the pieces yet, and us sitting together, you know?
I think I love the idea of kind of not like, you know, fighting between disabled folks and HR or unions, but like, how do we sit down and share knowledge together to come up with new best practices? And even thinking about myself in the workforce and the barriers I've experienced, how do we, so many of my friends aren't in the workforce because of these barriers, how do we open the doors to more people? And to traditional employment, I wanted to very briefly say, when I was thinking about those sick days, a lot of my friends end up doing freelance work because traditional work, you know, might not be accommodating.
[Shawn Proulx]
So I know what you're gonna say. I know what you're gonna say. You're gonna say that when you have to take the time off, you don't get paid.
[Emily Gillespie]
Yeah, you don't, you don't get benefits. You don't get health benefits. You don't get paid.
Let me tell you, being sick is beyond expensive. You know, even having health benefits now that barely cover some of what I need. So I can't, I couldn't afford not to work even if I wanted to, you know.
[Shawn Proulx]
It's expensive personally, and it's expensive to society.
[Emily Gillespie]
But I do think disabled folks and myself included, sometimes I offer unique benefits in workplaces. And I really like spaces where I can lead with my skills. Like for instance, on the team I'm on right now as a peer worker, I'm not great with technology.
Rather than fighting with technology, I can turn on my computer and do the basics, don't worry. But rather than fighting to learn that skill, I know who on my team is great with it and ask them to help me. But something I'm great with is I'm a big ideas person.
So if someone needs creative ideas, I'm your person. I really love the idea of having diverse teams. And rather than forcing everybody to be great or okay at everything, let us be good at what we're good at, you know.
[Shawn Proulx]
It's a beautiful idea.
[Emily Gillespie]
I absolutely love working. I love the fields I've chosen. So I do a better job when I'm accommodated.
I can work better. I can think better. I can make you more money.
[Shawn Proulx]
Emily Gillespie, thank you so much for coming on the Realize podcast.
[Emily Gillespie]
Thank you so much for having me.
[Shawn Proulx]
You're most welcome. And don't go anywhere. We'll be right back.
[Speaker 5]
Mental health, arthritis, some cancers, HIV, long COVID. These are just some of the countless examples of episodic disabilities. Episodic disabilities are chronic health conditions characterized by fluctuating degrees of illness and wellness.
And they impact over 2 million people in Canada. That's why there's Realize. For over 25 years, Realize has been fostering positive change for people living with HIV and other episodic disabilities.
For more information about us, visit RealizeCanada.org.
[Shawn Proulx]
Emily Gillespie, what stayed with me after that conversation was the emotional labor of it all. The constant calculations. Do I use a sick day today?
Do I save it for tomorrow? How much pain do I hide? And how much of myself do I disclose?
And perhaps most powerfully, Emily articulated something many people with episodic disabilities know intimately. That society is often willing to accept disability, but only if it's quiet, manageable, and invisible. Our next guest understands that reality deeply.
Ingrid Palmer is a disability justice advocate, speaker, and leader whose life is both devastating and profoundly inspiring. She's also my colleague at Realize, where she is a principal ideal advocate. Living with degenerative vision loss and other episodic disabilities, Ingrid has spent her life navigating systems that frequently misunderstood, underestimated, and excluded her.
What emerged from those experiences is an extraordinary voice for change. Warm welcome to Ingrid Palmer to the Realize podcast. How are you today?
[Ingrid Palmer]
I'm doing pretty good. How are you?
[Shawn Proulx]
I'm very good. Thank you. The audience doesn't know it yet, but they're in for a real treat because you, to me, are a force of nature.
Do you see yourself like that at all?
[Ingrid Palmer]
I see myself as a force of something. I don't know. Sometimes it's good.
Some people might not always see so, but I definitely push forward.
[Shawn Proulx]
Push forward from a lot. And maybe that's a great place for us to start is your background. If you could fill us in a little bit on what you're comfortable sharing, I think people will begin to see just how far you've come in life and what you've overcome.
[Ingrid Palmer]
Oh, great. Thank you, Shawn. So I emigrated to Canada with my family from Jamaica when I was three years old.
I grew up predominantly in my early years in Scarborough, in Chesterlea Boulevard. And as a child, I did experience some early childhood trauma in the forms of physical, mental, and sexual abuse. I was undiagnosed with my disability and definitely experienced a lot of challenges and misunderstanding around that.
I didn't realize that I saw differently from everyone else, that the way that I viewed the world was different. Unbeknownst to me, I had really severe tunnel vision. I lacked depth perception.
And I also had something called night blindness where my eyes didn't adjust in different lighting. And so I was like the fourth stooge of the three stooges. My mishaps were laughable and clownish in everyone else's view.
And they also thought it was deliberate. And so despite my daily protestations of not having my head up in the clouds or be playing class clown, the view on me was that I was either seeking attention or not paying attention. And so the thinking at that time, particularly culturally, was that corporal punishment would, you know, fix everything.
So I endured a lot of physical correction for my mishaps. And eventually in grade seven, I decided to leave home. I went into the child welfare system, which was another type of horror.
Not always, but, you know, there were some mishaps there. And one really good thing was that I got diagnosed when I was 14 at SickKids Hospital. And I found out that I had a very rare degenerative eye condition.
And at first, I actually felt quite elated because I knew I wasn't pretending. And here was my vindication, only to find out that there was no cure and no treatment. And that over time, I would slowly and continuously lose my sight and my vision.
And that was an incredibly difficult thing to hear as a young teen. And particularly because I was alone. I had no one who had accompanied me to the appointment.
And I remember for the first couple years after diagnosis, just really bewildered. And not knowing what would become of me, because there was absolutely no representation of blindness anywhere. And definitely not of a young Black girl.
[Shawn Proulx]
I'm going to jump in, because I think 14 years to wait for a diagnosis is an awfully long time. And I wonder, what was it like for you just to be a child, living with that, and receiving the kind of treatment that you got? To be so misunderstood, just to have people think that you were being just a clown in class.
It must have felt very lonely. It must have felt terrifying sometimes.
[Ingrid Palmer]
It was incredibly lonely. And it was terrifying and bewildering, because I just had no explanation for my mishaps. I would literally walk into an open door, because I couldn't tell.
And I mean into the actual door and not through the opening, because I couldn't tell where the opening was, because my world was incredibly flat. So not only having to navigate such rare conditioning, but not even understanding that there was something different. As far as I was concerned, I saw the same as everybody else.
They were just better at using their eyes. That's what I thought. And we don't usually think of vision loss as episodic.
But with retinitis pigmentosa, what you see and how you see changes so many times. There's so many variables. It's not only about the type of lighting.
It's your position in that lighting. If I simply turned my head to the left or the right, took a step forward or backward, that could completely change how you see and how you navigate. You can have things going across your vision, floaters, lights flashing.
Sometimes you see people as people. Sometimes they're just all a shadow person. They're just a black shadow moving.
And you can never predict what is going to be happening or how you're going to see. And so that's why I link my disability to being episodic, because it's always fluctuating. It's always changing and predictable.
And it just feels like sometimes like a nightmare trying to navigate it when you can't ever predict what is going to show up.
[Shawn Proulx]
Do you have good days of vision and bad days of vision, or is it moment to moment?
[Ingrid Palmer]
Well, now it does change still, even though my vision is so much diminished, of course, from how it was when I was young. And I do have cataracts. So those move around and those impact your vision as well.
Fatigue and other things, the weather changes it, snow, rain, and the type of lighting and overcast day versus a sunny day. People would think that a sunny day would be better. But sun also causes a lot of shade.
And as I said, that my pupils don't change in different lightings like other people do. They don't open and close. So going through constant shade, light, shade, light is so difficult to navigate.
And actually a cloudy day, I remember, would be the days when I could navigate best because the light would be so even. But I also live with osteoarthritis. And then when you have to use a cane to navigate on the days when my arthritis flares up, I can't hold my cane in the position that I'm supposed to.
And you're supposed to swing it back and forth at a certain angle. And yeah, so different conditions impact on each other in other ways that can limit you in ways that people might not think about. So it's always important to kind of understand that many people are living with co-occurring disabilities that impact on one another in a variety of ways that unless you're living with it, you really wouldn't imagine or understand.
[Shawn Proulx]
I want to stay in this lane. But I want to go back to a couple of things you said about your childhood, because this is why I call you a force of nature. Because it would take one to be in grade seven, you said, and up and walk out of your family, your home.
Where did you have the strength to find the strength to do that?
[Ingrid Palmer]
It's so incredible when I think about it. And I'll share one thing with you that being a parent of three children, every time each one of them turned 13, I would look at them and wonder the same thing. Like, how?
How did you do that? But the truth be told is that the layer trauma that I was experiencing on a daily basis, and not only navigating an undiagnosed disability that I didn't know I had, I just knew that I had a lot of challenges. And not being understood, being accused with the method, having no support in the method of correction, always being physical.
And then with the last one being experiencing sexual abuse on top of it, it just got to the point where I just couldn't. I just couldn't continue. And I just felt like the unknown was better than the known that I'd been experiencing for all of my life that I had to leave.
And I would rather risk that. And when we hear about a lot of youth who are in care on the streets, and many do have disabilities, it's about that misunderstanding and about what you're experiencing being worse than the unknown. And so kids will take to the streets.
[Shawn Proulx]
And stepping back into the lane of talking about disability and episodic disability, I think one of the things that you've pointed out holds true that a lot of people don't realize, and that's that disability or episodic disability is often invisible. And in your case, it was invisible, and it caused so much confusion, misunderstanding, caused you to have corporal punishment inflicted on you because they thought you were just being a joker. And I think that's important to point out, because so many people think a disability is something obvious.
There, someone's in a wheelchair, someone has a cane, someone walks with a limp, etc.
[Ingrid Palmer]
Yeah, if I could add to that, I'll also show that, you know, not only that many disabilities, and particularly episodic disabilities, are invisible, but people also have the expectation on us that we can explain and educate what we're going through. And that's not necessarily true. What I have found in my life is that I can explain really clearly how things were two or three years ago, because you've been experiencing it for that length of time that you understand it.
But current experiences can be very difficult to translate and to explain in a way that's coherent for someone else to understand. And so this expectation that we can just communicate exactly what it is that we're going through and how it feels and make it, you know, understandable to you who has not experienced it at all is not fair.
[Shawn Proulx]
Well, and you didn't even know what was going on with you because you had no framework of reference. You didn't know that your vision was different to everyone else's. You thought that everyone thought this way.
[Ingrid Palmer]
That's true. But even after diagnosis, and even after years, because the impacts were always changing as my vision was continuing to deteriorate. And even with arthritis, and even with knowing other people with different disabilities, I think this expectation that you're automatically an expert.
And we are, in one sense, an expert on ourselves and what we need. But there's also sometimes that gray area where things are just felt and it's very hard to put them into words. And I think a little bit more understanding and compassion around that is important.
And that's why we find so much resonance in community. Because here we are with others who we actually don't have to be adept at explaining it because we get it. We understand it through that experience.
But if you don't have that, sometimes I feel that there's just this pressure to be able to communicate that. And some things can't be communicated. They can only be experienced.
And I think some comprehension and empathy around that is also important. While we also recognize that we are experts. So, I want to make sure that I'm not confusing that.
[Shawn Proulx]
We set the table with who Ingrid Palmer is. And I just want to move on to the subject at hand, which is women with disability in the workplace. Women have to, without disability, work twice as hard, three times as hard, four times as hard, accept lower pay and hope to get ahead in the workplace.
And I wonder about your workplace experience, how you entered the workplace, when you did, and what you found when you got there.
[Ingrid Palmer]
Yeah, another really interesting question. So, one particular characteristic of being in care, and especially with the last placement that I had, which was in a long-term girls group home in Parkdale. So, the expectation was that every summer we would have a job.
So, I actually started working at a very young age, at 14. And every summer had a job. And at that time, I didn't disclose for many years.
Because there was such stigma against disability, that I would have to make my own wraparounds in the workplace. And a lot of times that required me holding an immense amount of information in my head. Because I couldn't necessarily read things that were maybe posted on the wall for us to access, or resource, or even the computer screen.
I worked at a very prominent hotel downtown, and I couldn't even see the screen. And I worked at the front desk checking. And you faced it till you made it.
I sure as heck did. I sure as heck did. And that also speaks to the culture that is in many workplaces where you know, all, I think, employees, many employees with disabilities, the stats show, but particularly for women with disabilities, that we don't feel comfortable or safe to do so.
And that speaks to some of the discrimination that you talked about in the workplace that happens around pay equity, or just the expectations on women. There is definitely gender discrimination. And there have been very limited times where I have felt that it's been okay and safe to disclose.
[Shawn Proulx]
I was going to say, what is the role of fear in all of this? How big a role does it play?
[Ingrid Palmer]
Fear leads that. Because, you know, there is fear of being stereotyped. There's fear of having your career suddenly be limited.
There's fear of, you know, having your work either being fired or having limited shifts suddenly. And these are things that have been documented in research on employees with disabilities that they have experienced in the workplace after disclosure. Before disclosure, perhaps, or with someone who doesn't have a disability, if they make a mistake in their job, it's a mistake.
Once your disability is known, everything is attributed to your disability. Everything. It's because of the condition that you have.
And that is not necessarily true. Another experience of women working with disabilities is having our competence constantly questioned. And can you imagine having to spend the bulwark of your day proving your capacity and proving your leadership, improving your value to the workplace, instead of actually being able to just execute it?
It's exhausting. And that is the experience of many women with disabilities. It's the experience of women overall, but women with disability, and when you add intersectionality to it, it's absolutely compounded.
[Shawn Proulx]
What have you done to, fight is a strong word, but to buck up against this and find your way to where you are now?
[Ingrid Palmer]
One of the things I found, and that I encourage for others, is really building a community and a tribe and a support system around yourself. People that you can go to, to help you fill your cup again and encourage you, because we really are facing a lot in our daily lives. Managing disability, particularly episodic disability, takes a lot.
Navigating the variety of barriers and adversity that you come up against in the workplace is a lot. So, reaching out, I think, for support, and there are a lot of resources, Realize has a disclosure guide that's available to help folks decide whether or not they can and should disclose. There are tools such as JDAP that can help.
You have conversations with your employer around navigating the accommodation journey. And I think that instead of taking on all the responsibility for navigation on ourselves, that it's really important that we not only have a tribe around us, but that we are accessing resources that are available to help us, because it's too much to do on your own.
[Shawn Proulx]
On your own. At one point, did you find, if you found, a level of satisfaction, some ease and flow in your work experience? How long did that take you working as you have been for so many years now?
[Ingrid Palmer]
Right. So, although I said that I started working at a young age, around 21, I left employment completely just to finish my post-secondary education, which took time. And of course, as students with disabilities know, involves its own set of barriers and challenges to navigate.
That's a different episode. It is a different episode. But when I did finish my educational pursuits and was ready to head back into the workplace, I was really completely shocked at what I found.
And despite having graduated with really good grades, I found that employers saw me only as a liability risk. I was legally blind by that point. And even though I was called back for second or third interviews in the end, they would always rather, and some of them said this point blank, that they would go with somebody who was less qualified, that didn't have a disability, that they would rather that.
Because of the liability. Because of the liability that, well, what they perceived as liability. I had one employer directly say to me that he would have preferred if I had a different disability.
And to him, that would have been a mobility disability. Because then he could have just built a ramp. Is she right?
I might not even have done that because employees in using wheelchairs still face an incredibly large amount of barriers and discrimination still. So I actually could not find a job and ended up like a lot of disabled people, feeling forced to go on welfare. And there I remained for almost 20 years.
And I ended up volunteering. And a quick note on welfare. You get next to nothing.
But it is, it's not even next to nothing. It pretty much is nothing. Pretty much an impossible to live on.
And when you have children, as many people with disability do, it's a very, very difficult situation.
[Shawn Proulx]
And you were in for almost two decades. Yeah.
[Ingrid Palmer]
Yeah.
[Shawn Proulx]
How did you get out?
[Ingrid Palmer]
So I, because I have such a desire to contribute to the world, I started volunteering in all the sectors that had impacted my life. So I began in education. I also was volunteering in child welfare, in poverty reduction, in housing, and really in gender-based violence, just in every area that had impacted me and was participating in projects and also sharing my story.
And funnily enough, in the pandemic of all times, of all times, that is where I received the opportunity to apply for a full-time senior position in a very prominent community-based employer in Toronto. And I was a successful candidate and in one swoop was able to transfer off of welfare and into a full-time paying job and have been gainfully employed ever since.
[Shawn Proulx]
And what does that do for you as a person? What does that do for your soul when you meet, are allowed to leave sort of the confines of welfare and step into a senior level position and thrive? How does that change you?
[Ingrid Palmer]
Oh, well, it not only changed me, it changed my entire family. And that's the thing to understand is that we positively impact someone's life. It doesn't only stay within that person.
It really filters out to whoever is connected to them as well. And it absolutely did unlock, on a larger scale than volunteering did, my capacity, what I had to give, the tools and the skills that I was born with or developed through my education. I had the opportunity to give and to participate and to not only learn from others, but to share with others as well.
And that is what we are losing when people with disability, and particularly today we're talking about women with disabilities, when we are either blocked from the workforce entirely or are not allowed to be gainfully employed and to be sharing our skills in ways that will positively impact not only our employers or co-workers, but ourselves and our families as well.
[Shawn Proulx]
What do you want to say to employers that are watching or listening to this right now about hiring women with disabilities?
[Ingrid Palmer]
I want to ask employers to really be reflective on their policies, on their culture, and really be cognizant of the ways in which they are either maintaining barriers or taking them down and really providing pathways for women with disabilities to show the innovation and the talents that they have that they are actually using in their everyday lives that would be of great benefit to employers that are actually the same type of skills that they say they are looking for. Women with disabilities carry those in spades.
[Shawn Proulx]
And correct me if I'm wrong, but when employers do this, they first of all, there's a general thinking that by doing this, it's going to be so expensive and they're worried about the bottom line and they're worried about spending money. It's often a question of money. But research shows that when they make way for people with disabilities, that they actually do better in a profit sense.
[Ingrid Palmer]
They absolutely do do better. And it's actually many accommodations cost $500 or less. A lot of them are even free and that are really simple to implement.
And the important thing is to really build that relationship and the ability to co-create the accommodation pathway with employees. A lot of times something as simple as being able to have frequent breaks, having flexibility in work schedules, where you work, how you work can really make the difference in everything. And that doesn't cost anything at all.
It's a mindset shift. And a large amount of accommodations to me are really based on mindset and attitudes over actual things that cost a lot of money.
[Shawn Proulx]
Change your mind, change your business.
[Ingrid Palmer]
It's really about the mindset change.
[Shawn Proulx]
What do you want to say to women with disabilities who are listening to this or watching this and they understand where you were because that's where they are now?
[Ingrid Palmer]
I really want to say to them that you are not alone. You are not in this alone. There are so many of us out there striving the same way that you are.
Know that we spend our lives adapting to environments that weren't built for us. But those exact skills that we have employed and honed through that are the exact skills that are going to bring you into the future and to really light that path forward. Don't give up.
Build your tribe and your community and keep pushing forward.
[Shawn Proulx]
Ingrid Palmer, I think so highly of you. Thank you so much for coming on to the podcast today. I appreciate you so much.
[Ingrid Palmer]
Thank you so much for that opportunity, Shawn.
[Shawn Proulx]
That was Ingrid Palmer. There is something extraordinary about hearing someone speak so plainly and honestly about survival, about what happens when disability intersects with race, gender, poverty, and fear. And yet, despite all of that, Ingrid's message was ultimately about possibility, about what can happen when workplaces stop seeing disabled women as liabilities and start recognizing them as leaders, innovators, and experts in adaptation.
But creating that kind of change requires more than awareness. It requires education. It requires policy.
It requires employers willing to rethink the culture of work itself. That brings us to our final guest. Addison Brash leads the WAGE Project, a national initiative focused specifically on women with episodic disabilities in the workplace.
The project is trying to move these conversations beyond theory and into action. Welcome, Addison Brash, to the Realize podcast. How are you?
Doing well, Shawn. How are you doing today? I'm doing good too, thanks.
Nothing short of alarming, the stats that you presented. That was your voice in the prelude of this episode talking about pay equity. Just the number of women who have episodic disabilities was an alarming stat for me to hear.
Disclosure stats, you brought some up there too. And then talked about the barriers at work that women face that are unique to them. And I wonder what your take is on the state of the world when we look at women with episodic disability in the workplace in Canada.
When you first started to hear these stats and read these stats, what did you think?
[Addison Brash]
It was kind of shocking when I was doing the research to put together this project. I think that we've made strides when it comes to both gender equity and disability equity in the workplace. But just the numbers themselves, like 0.2% or 0.3% of women with disabilities being in leadership roles is tiny and nowhere near what it should be. I think that we've made a lot of progress. I think that we have a long way to go still. I'm hoping that this project can get us one step closer to true equity in the workplace.
[Shawn Proulx]
Is that the intention of the wage project? To get real life, real equity in the workplace? Or is it broader than that?
[Addison Brash]
It's broader than that. That's the long term goal. The goal right now is just to kind of open up employers and managers and HR staff.
Open up their eyes a little bit to what life in the workplace can look like for people who identify as women that are working with a potentially not visible or consistent disability, like episodic disabilities. So just kind of get the conversation going is the goal right now.
[Shawn Proulx]
As you've talked to women with episodic disabilities in the workplace, what have you learned along the way besides the statistical stuff that we've talked about? But just in terms of personal learnings that you've taken away, you've met women in the workplace with episodic disabilities.
[Addison Brash]
There's more to it than just gender and disability or not living with a disability. I'm learning how important it is to consider skin color and sexuality and other identities that come along with being human is really important to consider. We can't just look at one or two things in a human.
People feel heard when they feel seen, and a lot of women are not feeling seen in the workplace right now, specifically women with disabilities who might be a person of color or an indigenous person or somebody in lower income. There's so much to consider and it's a really big conversation.
[Shawn Proulx]
What's the uphill battle with a project like this? And we live in a time now where you talk about skin color, you talk about sexual orientation, you use the words being seen, and some people listening to this would call all that woke. And there's an anti-woke movement going on right now.
Many people claim to be sick of wokeness. What is the uphill battle when you factor that in?
[Addison Brash]
The uphill battle is probably people's inability to consider other people's perspectives, to consider other people's life experiences. Just because somebody has one experience with disability doesn't mean it's the same with another person's experience. And that goes the same in all areas of life, is no two people are going to have the exact same experience.
So the battle for us specifically is actually reaching people that are higher up in businesses, in organizations to get them to attend these workshops to just open up their minds a little bit. We have a lot of people with lived experience attending the workshops and people that are already quote-unquote woke that are attending because they know how important it is. The goal is to strip away the word woke and just consider being a human and consider different human experiences.
And that is our challenge is to get people in higher up positions to really care and to really show up. And just like, we're going to be nice to you. It's going to be okay.
We're going to learn together. We're going to grow together. And we're going to move here.
Yeah, we're not attacking you. We're going to hear from people with lived experience.
[Shawn Proulx]
And I love how Jane Fonda boiled it down recently. She said, woke just means you give a damn. Exactly.
Exactly.
[Addison Brash]
Yeah. I think that when people hear the word woke, they get scared and want to run away because it is once you start to look at it.
[Shawn Proulx]
Even if someone just feels woke.
[Addison Brash]
Once you start to like recognize the inequities in life, it kind of is all you see. Once you see that, you can start to make change. And you can be a part of a bigger movement and a good direction in society.
[Shawn Proulx]
And important to remind people who might be watching this or listening to this right now who are in leadership positions. The research and the stats are there that demonstrate and prove that those people who bring in these woke ideas into the workplace see their bottom line rise. It's profitable when you take care of your employees and put them in better positions than they might be in now.
You will make more money.
[Addison Brash]
Yeah.
[Shawn Proulx]
That's what people need to hear.
[Addison Brash]
Yeah. Ultimately, I think that we need to consider universal design. So if we think about like the curb cut effect, that will benefit not only people in wheelchairs, but it will benefit people with children and it will benefit kids with scooters.
Like universal design is everything. It just benefits everybody.
[Shawn Proulx]
And let's just touch on that for a minute, because it's something that I've learned along the way about universal design is that it's usually created for the benefit of someone, say like when you talk about the curb of a sidewalk that slopes down into the street, that was for people who use wheelchairs, but mothers with prams pushing their baby, people with luggage, people on bikes, all are benefiting from that. Texting was created for people who are hearing impaired.
And look at all of us living on our phones texting now.
[Addison Brash]
Certainly doesn't only benefit them now. It definitely is just a big part of the world, right?
[Shawn Proulx]
What's the response been as you've knocked on doors and offered to present what you have to say?
[Addison Brash]
The response has been big. People are very interested in this conversation. And it's a lot of people that are already a part of this conversation.
But people are excited to know that we're talking about such a niche topic, like to be talking about gender and a specific type of disability in the workplace is so kind of unheard of. We're the only ones doing this right now. I think that with good social media presence, good promotion and good word of mouth, I think that we can really pull in a lot of people right now.
And everybody's excited to be having this conversation. And I'm excited to be having this conversation. Like it's so specific and so important.
[Shawn Proulx]
Take us through a bit of the workshop that you presented recently and tell us who was there and what the response was.
[Addison Brash]
Yeah, so we did have a post-workshop survey and it looked like a lot of our attendees actually were HR staff, which is obviously very important. A lot of human resources, staff members will be the ones to provide accommodations to hear what people are struggling with at work. And they were a big part of our attendees at our first virtual national workshop.
This workshop was in collaboration with Ontario Disability Employment Network. So Sarah Birch from ODIN co-collaborated on this one with me. And they went through a lot of accommodation processes, what that can look like specific to women with episodic disabilities, and how to create an inclusive space to have that conversation and for people to disclose their disability should they choose to do such a thing.
So I think it kind of worked out perfectly that this session was a lot of HR staff.
[Shawn Proulx]
It's important to acknowledge that the definition of women in this work that you're doing is broad.
[Addison Brash]
This definition of women includes trans women and it includes anybody who identifies as so.
[Shawn Proulx]
What surprises you the most in the work that you've been doing? You've been doing it for about six months.
[Addison Brash]
I think the most surprising thing has probably been the challenge to get the higher-ups to kind of pay attention, to be honest. That's been the biggest surprise. I'm completely unsurprised by the people with lived experience, the women that are showing up, the people with disabilities that are showing up.
I love that and I love providing a space for that. But I'm surprised by, I guess, maybe our inability to really grab onto the higher-ups that could really benefit from hearing this information. That's been surprising to me.
[Shawn Proulx]
What have you learned along the way?
[Addison Brash]
Um, we can't do this kind of work without having somebody in our work sharing their lived experience. I think that I could talk about these stats until I'm blue in the face, but people won't feel anything. They will feel the impact of somebody sharing their lived experience.
I think that's been the most important part of these conversations in this workshop is nothing about us without us. And I realize we make sure that we bring somebody in and we pay them appropriately for their time and their energy to share what it's been like for them to be a woman living with an episodic disability.
[Shawn Proulx]
And how are you going to measure those results in terms of success of the WAGE project? What's going to make it a success for you?
[Addison Brash]
I just want to get the conversation going. Just feeling people's minds opening up a little bit through these workshops, you can kind of like witness it firsthand. When people start asking questions and wanting to learn more, you can feel their brains expanding a little bit to try to understand what this experience is like at work for women with episodic disabilities.
We will create any change that we can create.
[Shawn Proulx]
Anything that I haven't asked you that you want to talk about?
[Addison Brash]
I think this conversation is necessary. You know, I feel like people think that there's been a lot of progress made, but the stats show otherwise. And I think we really need to consider that.
[Shawn Proulx]
Yeah, and just going back to what I was saying at the very beginning about finding them alarming those stats. You have to remember we're in 2026 and we think we've come so far, as you just said. And then you see statistics like this and you realize that there's so much more work to be done.
And it's really good work that you're doing, leading wage, and I think you're great. And I appreciate you coming on the podcast today. My thanks to Emily Gillespie, Ingrid Palmer, and Addison Brash for sharing their stories, their expertise, and their honesty.
One of the things I kept thinking about while making this episode is how often people with episodic disabilities are asked to adapt themselves to systems that refuse to adapt back, to push through, to mask, to over-perform, to educate, to justify. And yet what we've heard today is that accommodation is not charity. Inclusion is not charity.
Accessibility is not charity. These are not special requests. They are the foundation of dignity.
And when workplaces become more accessible for women with episodic disabilities, they become better for everyone. I'm Shawn Proulx. Thanks for listening to The Realize Podcast.
Thank you for joining us on The Realize Podcast, nurturing potential, inclusion, and belonging. A production of Realize. Realize fosters positive change for people living with episodic disabilities.
Please help us by taking our fast three-question survey found in the episode notes. Thank you to our guests this episode for their expertise and generous sharing of their stories. A special thanks to Addison Brash for their invaluable assistance in making this episode happen.
Writer, producer, host, Shawn Proulx. Audio and video editor, John Mackie. Graphic design, Alexandria Ditner.
Executive producers, Kate Murzin, Roger Musselman, and Janet London for Realize. The Realize Podcast is sponsored by the Government of Canada. For more information on Realize, visit realizecanada.org and follow Realize on X, formerly Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube at HIVandRehab and at Realize at Work. Be sure to subscribe and to share this podcast with your friends, especially those with episodic disabilities, on your socials, and please take a few seconds to give us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts. It really helps other listeners find this podcast. Thanks again for joining us.
Until next time, what do you realize?
Hey, I'm Nishan. Hi, my name is Shayla. My nickname is Galbus.
I realize. I realize. And I realize.
Great things can happen.Life is better when we work together. I'm so happy to be a grandma of a two-year-old.