Gender Role Perceptions and Women's Caregiving Experiences

Providing care to an aging population is a growing public concern as the percentage and number of elderly persons requiring care continues to increase. Families, in particular women, are responsible for providing care to dependent relatives. This study seeks to understand if and how women's attitudes toward providing uncompensated care have changed following the women's movement. Five younger and five older caregivers were interviewed in order to understand the relationship between gender role identity and the experiences of caregiving. As expected, younger caregivers held less traditional gender roles for women. Qualitatively, caregivers with a stronger feminist gender role identity experienced less satisfaction and slightly more burden in the caregiving role. Although younger caregivers scored slightly higher on burden, there was a qualitative difference in the types of burden experienced between younger and older caregivers. Implications for these findings are discussed in relation to caregiver interventions.