Applying feminist, multicultural, and social justice theory to diverse women who function as caregivers in end-of-life and palliative home care

MacKinnon, Christopher J.

doi:10.1017/s1478951509990514

Cited by 30 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 63 publications

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“…In the caregiving literature, cultural differences have been found in gender role expectations for caregiving (Lai, Luk, & Downloaded by [University of Illinois Chicago] at 23:16 05 February 2015 Andruske, 2007;MacKinnon, 2009) and family role expectations for caregiving (Henz, 2006). In the online support literature, some underrepresentation of ethnic members in health-related groups has also been reported, due to ethnic differences in need for help, attitudes toward mediated communication, trust concerns about health care providers, and digital inequality (Fogel, Ribisl, Morgan, Humphreys, & Lyons, 2008;Im & Chee, 2008;Lieberman, 2008).…”

Section: Practical Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Uses and Gratifications of Online Care Pages: A Study of CaringBridge

Anderson

2011

Health Communication

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This study investigated how online care pages help people connect with others and gain social support during a health care event. It reports the results of a survey of 1035 CaringBridge authors who set up personalized web pages because of hospitalization, serious illness, or other reasons, regarding the uses and gratifications obtained from their sites. Four primary benefits were found to be important to all authors of CaringBridge sites: providing information, receiving encouragement from messages, convenience, and psychological support. Hierarchical multiple regression revealed significant effects for six demographic and health-related variables: gender, age, religiosity, Internet usage, the purpose for which the site was set up, and sufficiency of information received from health care providers. Support was obtained for the perspective that online care pages provide new media gratifications for authors, and that health-related antecedents of media use may affect media selection and gratifications. The implications of this study for communication researchers and support services like CaringBridge are also discussed.

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Section: Practical Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Uses and Gratifications of Online Care Pages: A Study of CaringBridge

Anderson

2011

Health Communication

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“…Family caregiving has long been viewed as a ‘female’ issue and an expansion of the traditional responsibilities of a wife or a daughter . Paying respect to the change in traditional gender roles, the growing number of cancer patients as well as the worldwide rising trend of home‐based palliative care, the distinct facets of caregiving need to be understood to strengthen informal caregivers, in their role as an ongoing support system for terminally ill family members . Importantly, explanations for the apparently higher psychosocial vulnerability of female caregivers in palliative care are largely missing to date .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender differences in caregiver burden and its determinants in family members of terminally ill cancer patients

et al. 2015

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Psychological support interventions for family caregivers should take gender-specific risk factors into account. Interventions focusing on keeping up hope while caring for a terminally ill family member may be a valuable addition to palliative services to improve support for family carers. Women may benefit from interventions that address adaptive coping and strategies to deal with the dual demands of employment and caring. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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“…For example, the shift of care from institutions to the home means that those who work within the home, largely women, are filling the gaps in labour and services that have been left by neo-liberal policies [1,11]. Feminist scholars have long acknowledged that the role of family caregiving is largely taken up by women because they are often associated with the traditional gendered division of unpaid work within the home [1,12-14]. Emphasizing the gendered aspect of care provision, Bondi (2008) describes how caring work is ‘given’ to women and that this often becomes a defining characteristic of their self-identity and lifework.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Furthermore, family caregivers’ abilities to cope with stress and burden and to access needed supports is largely shaped by the situated social/physical locations in which they live [1,14,22], which in turn, influences whether or not they experience negative health outcomes.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Critically examining diversity in end-of-life family caregiving: implications for equitable caregiver support and Canada’s Compassionate Care Benefit

Giesbrecht

Crooks

Williams

et al. 2012

Int J Equity Health

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IntroductionFamily (i.e., unpaid) caregiving has long been thought of as a ‘woman’s issue’, which ultimately results not only in gendered, but also financial and health inequities. Because of this, gender-based analyses have been prioritized in caregiving research. However, trends in current feminist scholarship demonstrate that gender intersects with other axes of difference, such as culture, socio-economic status, and geography to create diverse experiences. In this analysis we examine how formal front-line palliative care providers understand the role of such diversities in shaping Canadian family caregivers’ experiences of end-of-life care. In doing so we consider the implications of these findings for a social benefit program aimed at supporting family caregivers, namely the Compassionate Care Benefit (CCB).MethodsThis analysis contributes to a utilization-focused evaluation of Canada’s CCB, a social program that provides job security and limited income assistance to Canadian family caregivers who take a temporary leave from employment to provide care for a dying family member at end-of-life. Fifty semi-structured phone interviews with front-line palliative care providers from across Canada were conducted and thematic diversity analysis of the transcripts ensued.ResultsFindings reveal that experiences of caregiving are not homogenous and access to services and supports are not universal across Canada. Five axes of difference were commonly raised by front-line palliative care providers when discussing important differences in family caregivers’ experiences: culture, gender, geography, lifecourse stage, and material resources. Our findings reveal inequities with regard to accessing needed caregiver services and resources, including the CCB, based on these axes of difference.ConclusionsWe contend that without considering diversity, patterns in vulnerability and inequity are overlooked, and thus continually reinforced in health policy. Based on our findings, we demonstrate that re-framing categorizations of caregivers can expose specific vulnerabilities and inequities while identifying implications for the CCB program as it is currently administered. From a policy perspective, this analysis demonstrates why diversity needs to be acknowledged in policy circles, including in relation to the CCB, and seeks to counteract single dimensional approaches for understanding caregiver needs at end-of-life. Such findings illustrate how diversity analysis can dramatically enhance evaluative health policy research.

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Applying feminist, multicultural, and social justice theory to diverse women who function as caregivers in end-of-life and palliative home care

Cited by 30 publications

References 63 publications

The Uses and Gratifications of Online Care Pages: A Study of CaringBridge

The Uses and Gratifications of Online Care Pages: A Study of CaringBridge

Gender differences in caregiver burden and its determinants in family members of terminally ill cancer patients

Critically examining diversity in end-of-life family caregiving: implications for equitable caregiver support and Canada’s Compassionate Care Benefit

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