The invisibility of old men carers in Malta’s ageing care policy

Abstract

While women continue to perform the majority of unpaid care work throughout different life stages, the number of old men engaging in caring roles for ailing wives or partners is increasing. Yet, informal carers continue to be misrecognised as a homogenous cohort of women with men carers, especially old men, remaining an insufficiently researched and overlooked cohort and almost invisible in ageing care policy. This article embeds this postulation in the Maltese context which is characterised by two key policies on ageing welfare, the National Strategic Policy for Active Ageing and the National Dementia Strategy, to investigate the extent that they identify and meet the support needs of old men carers. It seeks to convey an understanding of the caring activities old men carers engage in and to elaborate the implications for gendered-sensitive and lifewide community care policy with a focus on intersectional perspectives and implications.