The Salience of Gender 93 4 on the effectiveness of the communication when; 1) it is not a salient characteristic of a person’s lived experience; 2) it threatens or is not aligned with a person’s perception about their gendered self or 3) it overemphasizes or generalizes differences between people of other gender identities which are not well understood yet. Methodological limitation and consideration Due to Covid-19 restriction, the interviews for this study were conducted virtually. This option enhanced long-distance participation and is cost- and time-effective. However, technical difficulties can be a barrier for both participation and the quality of the interviews. We strived to mitigate technical issues by providing technical support to participants and by testing before the actual interview took place. Furthermore, digital interviews can help to enrich data concerning sensitive topics, which can include genderrelated topics, as participants can participate in a (private) location of choice. Yet, visual cues can be more difficult to read through a camera and might fail to work during the actual interview. Conducting virtual field work requires balancing the advantages and disadvantages compared to face-to-face interview.48,49 In this study we applied an inductive approach by making gender relevant through our interview questions to capture gendered experiences. We refrained from using a deductive approach as this, often used, approach risks perpetuating and reinforcing (Western) stereotypical views which are invariably subject to change and differ through culture, context, and time. We aimed to uncover gendered norms, views, and behaviours that participants made salient themselves, rather than gendering their experiences, as researchers, by using existing gendered frameworks for analyses. However, this approach is likely to elicit gendered perception in participants who are already more inclined to process gender-related information about themselves and therefore likely to be more gender-schematic. That is not to say that all gender-schematic people are consciously aware of the gender schemas applied in their evaluation of life experiences. On the contrary, many people, both gender schematic and a-schematic, are unaware of how their perceptions are organized based on gender and when or how they are ‘doing gender’ as a normative social practice in daily life. This might also explain the initial sense of confusion that many of the participants in this study expressed when they were explicitly asked about the role of gender in their illness experience. More refined research methodologies are needed to explore the impact of different gender dimensions on illness experiences of- and care for people with PD. Gender schemas of which people are less consciously aware within themselves or their environment are challenging to capture inductively without a (personalized) gendered frame of reference. When using existing gendered frameworks for analyses, researchers should test for fit and relevance in their specific research setting where possible.
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