Gender Aware PD Care 171 6 on your own, perhaps unconscious, assumptions regarding gender norms and roles and how these might influence (medical) social interactions. Also, it is important to assess the specific challenges in peoples’ personal and professional roles to tailor their individual treatment plans and provide education about how disease progression can lead to changes in motor functions, energy levels, emotionality, and cognitive abilities. This can contribute to an understanding that these changes are a result of underlying neurodegenerative processes and not personal failing.26 Furthermore, discussing adaptive strategies, assistive technologies and mobile aids that can help people with PD to continue to engage in their desired social roles with modifications in behaviours, routines, and environments. Researchers are encouraged to integrate gendersensitivity training and collaborations with advocacy groups focused on gender equity in healthcare to enhance the recognition of gender stereotypes and understanding of the impact of undesirable social biases on patient outcomes. The stereotype of ‘People with PD are old men’, while well supported, is the most common representation of PD since the sketch by Sir. William Richard Gowers MD in 1886.27 Although this image is still accurate for some people with PD, it does not represent the vast variations among people with PD we know today. As a result, particularly younger and middle-aged women can face poor public understanding and experience an unnecessary explanatory burden to counter this stereotypical perception.6 We therefore echo the calls for a broader and more accurate view of Parkinson’s through the use of diverse imaging and inclusive research participation.28–31 While acknowledging that no single image can adequately reflect the diversity in background, phenotypes, and experiences in PD, it is important that images, both in public and in medical teachings, are consistent with the advances in Parkinson’s research and encourage discussion about how Parkinson’s is represented. In this study we found gender norms and stereotypes on multiple levels of social manifestation in illness experiences of men and women with PD. Among men, the gender norms related to ‘men should be strong’ and ‘men should suppress their emotions’, were most strongly internalised and are therefore more likely to act as prosocial selfregulators. Research suggests that, although men and women tend to have similar emotional reactivity and fluctuations, men are more likely than women to suppress emotional expression in certain situations.32,33 A recent study reported greater gender role flexibility in women compared to men, which refers to the capacity to contextually switch between self-perceived masculine and feminine behaviours. Men experienced more negative affectivity, such as increased anxiety, self-criticism and feelings of depression when ‘code switching’ gender roles.34 The collective insight statement of men in our study that calls for more psychosocial support and coping with changes
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTk4NDMw