Health zyxw & Social Care in the Community zy 3: zy pp. 19-31 Gender differences in informal caring Sara Arber BSc MSc PhD and Jay Ginn BSc MSc PhD Department of Sociology, University of Surrey, Guildford Correspondence Sara Arber Department of Sociology University of Surrey Guildford GU2 5XH UK Abstract Men have hitherto largely been invisible in research on informal care. This paper examines gender differences in informal caring, focusing on gender differences according to the relationship between the carer and care-recipient and the location of caring. Household Survey, which identified over zyxw 2700 adults as informal carers. Four per cent of men and women provide care for someone living in the same household. More women than men, 13% compared with lo%, provide care for someone living in another household. Men carers are less involved in care provision than women, providing fewer hours of care each week, and are less likely to be the main carer. However, gender differences are most marked among married carers, apart from those caring for their spouse, and least among unmarried carers. Married men can often rely on their wives to perform caring roles rather than performing them personally. carers, but the gender difference is least among those caring for their spouse or for disabled children. Cross-sex personal care is performed within the marital relationship and by parents caring for disabled children, but seldom by adult children caring for their parents or in more distant caring relationships. Evidence of cross-sex taboos in giving personal care is largely restricted to care provided in another household. Since the majority of elderly people in need of care are women, such cultural taboos may reinforce the pressure on mid-life women to care for mothers and mothers-in-law. The paper uses secondary analysis of the 1990-91 General Women carers are more likely to provide personal care than men Keywords: gender, informal care, personal care, secondary analysis, taboos Accepted for publication 26 September 1994 Introduction The adage that community care is a euphemism for family care and that family care means care by women (Walker 1982, Finch & Groves 1983) makes invisible the role of men in providing informal care. Men carers have hitherto been neglected by social scientists largely because the early studies of informal care were born out of a feminist concern with women’s oppres- sion in the family, first in terms of caring for their own children, and later caring for their elderly parents. Caring not only affected their own opportunities for paid employment and pursuing other desired goals, but had social and psychological costs (Braithwaite 1990, Twigg 1992). Many of the early studies of caring focused on caring for mentally handicapped and physically dis- abled children (Wilkin 1979, Glendinning 1983, Baldwin 1985). These studies found very little involvement of fathers or anyone else contributing to the support of mothers caring for a severely disabled child. In the early 1980s, work on informal caring emphasized the burdens faced by mid-life women in providing informal care for elderly people. Brody (1981) coined the term ’women in the middle’ to 19