In the context of work rehabilitation under the Swiss Disability Insurance activation scheme, paraplegics develop a gendered empowerment experience model, the bio-vocational model, which ensures a balance between the daily temporalities of self-care and work. However, the model and people’s trajectories may be threatened by the insurance injunction to work (al-most) full time, and by the increased flexibility of assignments and time spent at work. Howev-er, it is the sexual and disablist divisions of labour, as well as the ableist organization of working time, modelled on full-time work, that exclude paraplegics from higher hierarchical positions. On the contrary, the exercise of flexibility and autonomy is a means of empower-ment that favours their self-development and their vertical mobility.
Keywords: paraplegia; rehabilitation; divisions of labor; modalities of work organization; empowerment experience model; flexibility, autonomy.