Gender Expression, Personhood, and Dementia: How Gender-Centered Care Reinforces a Sense of Self

• In Event: Aging and the Life Course Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): 13: Institutional Care Arrangements and Experiences

Abstract

Dementia is a neurodegenerative condition characterized by progressive cognitive decline, loss of autonomy, and increasing physical dependency. However, beyond its biological manifestations, dementia is also a deeply social and gendered construct. This paper suggests that gender expression persists in dementia through embodied practices, discourse, and interactional styles, even as materialistic gender expression (appearance and grooming) becomes increasingly mediated by caregivers. Gender-centered care has the potential to reinforce a sense of self, not by restoring autonomy, but by preserving authenticity. However, rigid and binary interpretations of gender risk reinforcing harmful norms and excluding those with non-normative identities.

The dissonance that arises when one transgresses man-made boundaries such as binary sex, binary gender, or the binary between health and death, is a recurring theme across this literature. Dementia exposes the instability of these categories, demanding more flexible identity-centered care practices.

Ultimately, gender expression in dementia is not erased, but transformed. Recognizing and affirming this expression may be central to preserving personhood in a population that has long been framed as having lost it.

Authors

• Syona Kiran Joshi, McMaster University

• Enakshi Dua, York University