Unpaid care and gender expectations in same-sex partnerships: opportunities to re-shape policy?

Unpaid care is a crucial issue amid ageing populations, rising living costs and financial challenges faced by public services. Existing research mainly focuses on heterosexual couples and childcare, neglecting the experiences of same-sex couples in caregiving. The proposed project seeks to address this gap by investigating how same-sex couples navigate different caregiving responsibilities and how family-related policies influence their arrangements. Thirty joint and individual interviews will be conducted with ten couples in Scotland. While gender disparity is not the core variable in same-sex partnerships, lived-experiences are nevertheless situated within wider social norms, practices and institutions that are gendered, creating care-related challenges. Shifts in public policies to provide support for diverse families’ care responsibilities remain pivotal to the recognition, valuing and gendered redistribution of care work. The findings will contribute to understanding caregivers’ needs in same-sex relationships to inform policy recommendations, challenging the common heteronormative model of unpaid care arrangements.