Betydelsen av kön och ålder i äldreomsorgen : om standardiserade biståndsutredningar och dess diskurser

The aim of the study is to explore how social categories, with focus on genderand age, is constructed in the social documentation which is a central part ofthe officially arranged elderly care in Sweden. The analysis consists of a discourseanalysis and has a standpoint in feminist theories about performativityand respectability. The analysis consists of a text analysis of case files and howdiscourses about social categories emerge in the texts. The case files are writtenin a standardized form which is central to the structure of the documentation.The study examines the following questions 1) how is the users of elderlycare and their relatives positioned through the discourse that emerges in thecase files? 2) how is the discourse in the case files a part of doing gender andage as social categories?The study shows that the case files are reproducing stereotyped gender rolesand positions “the elderly” by differencing them from other adults throughconceptions about characteristics and (the lack of) abilities. Women’s andmen’s needs are described differently whereas abilities and strategies areprominent in the women’s case files. The respectable narrative emerges in thedescription of women wanting to perform some of the workload which is absentin case files about men. The moral responsibility of relatives is reinforcedby the description about their care work or the absence of it. Male relatives arementioned in the case files prominently in the lack of female relatives. In thisway both masculinity and femininity are constructed through the implied valuesthat is attributed men versus women in the texts. A clear medical discourseemerges in the needs assessments. The assessment texts reformulate the descriptionsof needs and they are instead formulated as facts which reinforcethe medical discourse. In final, this study shows that users of elderly care andABSTRACT10their relatives are positioned from both gender and age and that these categoriesare integrated with each other. I draw the conclusion that age is a usefulcomplement to the theory of respectability and its importance in the narrativeof expression and assessment of a person’s needs