The Salience of Gender 89 4 Discussion Key findings In this study, we investigated the salience of gender-related aspects in the illness experiences and care provider preferences among men and women with PD. In most interviews, gender-related aspects were not strongly salient in the illness experiences of participants. For these participants, gender was not used as a frame of reference in their illness experience and several participants, particularly some women, felt their illness experiences were more influenced by effective coping skills such as taking agency and being literate about the disease rather than by their gender identity or gender related aspects. Men and women that expressed gender salience in their illness experience, referred to the general invisibility of women with PD, gendered norms and preferences related to emotional expression, different drivers for help-seeking behaviour and the impact of gendered role patterns in personal relationships. Furthermore, most participants did not have explicit gender preferences related to their healthcare providers. These participants expressed to value professional behaviours over the gender identity of their healthcare providers. Particularly behaviours that enabled respectful treatment, adequate understanding of their concerns and feelings of being supported. Participants that did express preferences in healthcare providers’ gender identity, expressed particular preferences for women as healthcare providers. These preferences were mostly rooted in preferences for stereotypical feminine behaviours such as ‘friendliness’ and ‘empathic’ or gendered norms related to ‘care taking’. For some, higher comfortability with women as healthcare providers were also motivated by a sense of ‘feeling safe’, specifically in the context of physical examinations or care. Comparison with previous literature In general, participants revealed knowledge of stereotypes commonly associated with their gender identity, however, the majority did not evaluate their own experiences in terms of these stereotypical views. These findings are supported by the gender schema theory, which states that some people are more likely to regulate their perceptions and behaviours according to sociocultural ideas about gender (‘gender schematic people’) while for others, gender is a less important frame of reference (‘gender a-schematic people’).23 Previous literature also demonstrated that when gender salience is low, so is self-stereotyping.24 Self-stereotyping involves the ascription of typical gender in-group attributes to the self, along with the accentuation of differences from the gender outgroup and is a product of interpersonal context.25 Even-though gender identity salience was cued explicitly during the interview by the framing of our questions, it appeared not to be the most salient social identity in the illness experiences of many participants. This finding might not be surprising given that the context of the interviews focused
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