Discourses Reproducing Gender Inequities in Hospice Palliative Home Care

As home is a site where gendered attitudes, beliefs, and practices are reproduced, it is imperative that policies and practices promote gender equity in end-of-life care at home.

The purpose of this study was to critically analyze gender relations in the sociopolitical context of hospice palliative home care.

Using a critical feminist perspective, we examined gender relations between and among clients with cancer, their family caregivers, and nurses in hospice palliative home care. Ethnographic methods of in-depth interviews (n = 25), observations of home visits (n = 9), and review of documents (n = 12) were employed to expose gender (in)equities.

This critical analysis sheds light on institutional discourses that reproduce gender inequities: discourses of difference and denial; discourses of individuality, autonomy, and choice; and discourses of efficiency, objectivity, and rationality. Although gender was discounted, these neoliberal discourses reinforced traditional gender relations.

Neoliberal discourses frame health and health-care experiences as resulting primarily from individual behaviors and biomedical factors, permitting health-care providers and policy makers to overlook power relations and the sociopolitical forces that obscure gender inequities. A critical perspective is needed to consider how social structures significantly shape everyday gendered experiences in hospice palliative home care.