What if… every woman felt supported in their caring role?

No dementia carer, male or female, should feel overwhelmed or alone.

In our 2024 survey, women told us about caring for multiple family members, often while juggling work. They spoke about a lack of support and experiencing financial stress. 85% of female dementia carers have reached crisis point at least once and 45% feel negative about being a carer.

Close your eyes and let your mind create an image of a carer. How old are they? Who are they caring for? Chances are the carer you have in your mind is a woman.

When caring responsibilities become necessary, women are generally expected to absorb the role of a carer often alongside work and parenthood. According to the 2021 Census, in England, women were more likely to provide unpaid care than men in every age group up to 75 – 79 years.

According to our 2024 survey findings, overall 73% of dementia carers did not choose to become a carer and for female dementia carers this figure increased to 81%.

Some of the female dementia carers we heard from were caring for the second, third and even fourth time.

Women shared how difficult it was to balance multiple caring responsibilities and make time for their well-being. One told us about struggling to juggle the competing needs of her adult daughter with special needs and her husband who has dementia. Another revealed she had to constantly re-arrange work to take her mum to appointments.

For many women, the moment they took on extra caring responsibilities, they felt abandoned and ignored.

This International Women’s Day, we want to encourage people to talk to the women in their lives about their caring roles. Let’s thank them for their incredible and valuable work. Let’s open up conversations about their challenges and how they might be overcome.

Our dementia advisors are here to share their knowledge and expertise to make life easier. We encourage all dementia carers to call our Carer Support Line to talk about their worries and challenges and to get practical tips and emotional support. Our team of dementia advisors is available Mon – Fri, 9 a.m. – 5 p.m.

We are campaigning for national governments to implement carers’ strategies for the benefit of all carers, female and male. National carers’ strategies should include provision for regular, proactively offered and frequently reviewed assessments of carers’ needs and sustainable resourcing of adult social care.

We believe that all dementia carers must be given help, support and the care they need to cope today and plan for tomorrow.

We are working to raise the profile of dementia carers’ experiences and invite carers to share their stories with us. At the moment we are focusing on whether carers have any alternative care plans in place.