The Salience of Gender 91 4 for treatment and support, in this case by referring the patient to a specialized social worker who could support the patient in the renegotiation process of self-limiting beliefs and behaviours towards effective coping strategies. Another example in our study consisted of a woman who shared that she experienced difficulties in renegotiating new role patterns related to household task divisions with her husband, because the care roles were more obvious for her as a woman in their relationship [Interview 17]. Previous research shows that role changes in relationships affected by PD are common, if not inevitable.34–36 How couples adapt (‘dyadic resilience’) to the advancing stages of PD depends on a number of relational features, such as commitment and equality within the dyad.37 Therefore, for the woman in our study, an inability to effectively renegotiate or reorganize household and caring tasks with her husband could become a contextual stressor that aggravates the symptoms of PD. When a clinician observes that this contextual stressor complicates the care for this woman, the clinician can encourage dialogue regarding relational changes, and explore whether there is a need to provide the couple with information on how to get further help. Our study could therefor aid healthcare providers to identify new targets of symptomatic treatment by recognizing that people with PD may have subtle ways of ‘doing gender’ as a means of preserving a sense of self and social relationships that could complicate their care.38 Aside from the novel gender-related findings in illness experiences of the individual participants in our interviews, we also observed that many participants in our study expressed that professional behaviours were deemed more relevant in their preferences for healthcare providers than gender identity and most participants did not express strong preferences for provider’s gender identities in general. However, social interactions in medicine are not free from reproducing gender stereotypes. Both men and women that expressed specific gendered preferences towards women healthcare providers did so because it made them feel more comfortable, particularly under conditions of intimate care and examinations. There were diverse motivational drivers behind feelings of comfortability with woman care providers. For some, mostly men, this was driven by stereotypical views related to ‘women as carers’ and attributed feminine traits such as ‘friendliness’, ‘empathic’ and ‘easier to talk to’. One woman expressed a sense of feeling physically safer with women providers after she shared an experience with a man provider that involved physical contact that she felt was inappropriate. These findings contrast previous studies reporting stronger same-gender preferences among both men and women patients who felt that same-gender providers where then more easier to talk to and feeling more comfortable during physical exams.39–41
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