A Narrative Study Carried Out With Older Women With Dementia Who Live Alone: Storytelling About Their Living Arrangements and Wishes For The Future

This study sets out to explore the significance of gender as an element in the experience of older women living alone at the time of a diagnosis of dementia. It places particular emphasis on power, voice and in/visibility in both research practice and co-production. Older women who live alone may experience difficulties after diagnosis in adapting to their environments. There is not a clear picture of support networks, such as the roles within broader families, neighbours or friends and access to services. Fewer studies focus on women and dementia from a gendered perspective and more on dementia and caregivers. As such, questions about gender, dementia and ageing are not being raised as interrelated and the voices of these women are silent. The study was informed by feminist theory and the concept of intersectionality which become the principal way to theorise the relations between systems of oppression and privilege. This provided a lens with which to expose and examine gendered assumptions within dementia. The design was a qualitative study, and the approach was narrative research. The approach that was taken to collect the data was storytelling, which was analysed by re-storying the stories, and developing themes, in a chronology order. The thesis also discusses my positionality as a Black British female researcher, including experiences of racism, both within the academia and in the research field.

URI

https://bradscholars.brad.ac.uk/handle/10454/20420

Type

Thesis

Qualification name

PhD