The paper concerns itself with users of home care as well as with providers, both paid and unpaid. As a catalyst paper, it seeks to raise awareness of gender as a variable in developing and implementing public policy about home care. It proposes that policy options in this area be subjected to a systematic analysis of genderbased differences. A recent survey queried Canadians about home care in the coming years. This response suggests that for the population at large, home care is a gendered phenomenon.
Women expect to live longer.
They expect that they may be required to provide home care to their aging partner or relatives, and that, in a reverse situation, their partner may not be able to assume the caregiver role. Or, having outlived their partner as most women do, they will find themselves dependent on outside home care services. Women may also foresee that much of the cargiving work for aging parents and other care recipients will fall on them as they attempt to juggle employment and other family work in their middle and later years. Moreover, health workers are predominantly female, and home care policy will inevitably affect the nature of their work and possibly their opportunities for professional advancement. Thus, both as the recipients of care and as paid and unpaid caregivers, women will be disproportionately and differentially affected by home care policy.