Gender and Caregiving

There has also been extremely limited funding available for the essential research that will inform interventions and programs to understand how to best support women and men in their caregiver roles. Hopefully, the changing demographics relating to age and increased budgetary implications for the healthcare system and consumer demand will motivate increases in support for such basic and essential information. Since gender is one of the most basic biological and psychosocial characteristics of individuals, knowledge of caregivers’ gender can be the first step toward understanding the complexities of cancer caregiving. Once intergender variations are more fully and objectively understood, additional components of the caregiver should be studied, such as; intragender differences, culture, age, race/ethnicity, relationship characteristics, stage in life span, and other demographics. Another important factor to be considered is the alignment of expectations and demands of the caregiver and the care recipient. This “fit” is essential for both the caregiver and care recipient's quality of life and can be gained through honest and open communication, education, and a deep understanding of the innate differences between men and women and how these differences are magnified in times of stress. For example, female caregivers report more emotional distress overall; however, male caregivers suffer more physically. In female caregivers, her selfefficacy is highly related to how well she copes as a caregiver. For male caregivers, the emotional state of the care recipient is an important component in how he will cope as a caregiver. The areas of interdependence in the caregiver experience are more common than there are differences. However, to benefit from the unique contributions of women and men, there need to be honest, open, and respectful negotiations over higher levels of reciprocity and conscious choices made about what each individual is capable and willing to provide. The selfawareness afforded to modern women and men through the development of the cerebral frontal cortex, communication skills, education, understanding, social values of equality, and an inherent belief in the worth of all human life creates, an environment where men and women can make conscious decisions about what it means to reach their full potential, independently and interdependently. Never before have women and men been able to use history, science, and technology in a society that increasingly values the equality of the sexes to make conscious and deliberate decisions about how to benefit from our shared values while fully exploiting the synergies of our individual biological, psychological, social, and spiritual inclinations. The caregiver experience is a microcosm of how men and women continue to evolve together and how we are recreating each other through our increasing respect and commitment to enhancing the humanity of both