Thread by @WomensRightsNet

🧵 On discrimination against people with Dementia from the gender ideology language demands placed on them

👉🏻womensrights.network/section3-adults

#NoToYourPronouns

▪️ 944,000 adults have dementia in the UK

🗣 Their communication disability needs are being ignored.

👵Women are greatly affected.

#NoToYourPronouns

🔹60-70% of carers for people with dementia are women
🔹Women are 2.3 times more likely to provide care for someone with dementia for over 5 years
🔹20% of female carers have gone from FT to PT employment as a result of their caring responsibilities
🔹17% felt penalised at work

The ability to process pronouns, indeed any language elements, is diminished in all dementia types:

▪️Alzheimer’s disease
▪️Vascular dementia
▪️Mixed dementia
▪️Dementia with Lewy Bodies
▪️Frontotemporal dementia
▪️Young-onset dementia

#NoToYourPronouns

cont/...
▪️Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD)
▪️Alcohol-related dementia
▪️HIV-associated neurocognitive disorder (HAND)
▪️Mild cognitive impairment (MCI)
▪️Learning disabilities and dementia
▪️Rare dementias

#NoToYourPronouns

Language difficulties are recognised as a major problem for people with dementia (Banovic, Zunic, Sinanovic, 2018)

#NoToYourPronouns

There are many symptoms and language processing is highly inter-related.

#NoToYourPronouns

It is well recognised that people with Alzheimer’s disease dementia experience:

🔺Impaired understanding of pronouns
🔺Abnormal over-use of pronouns
🔺Working memory impairment
(Almor et al., 1999)

#NoToYourPronouns

And it is best that conversation partners avoid pronouns in favour of “concrete, specific and simple words” (Rau, 1993)

#NoToYourPronouns

People with dementia have legal rights:
▪️ UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD)
▪️ Equality Act 2010-Disability
▪️ Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) under EqA
▪️ The Care Act 2014
▪️The Mental Capacity Act 2005
& can expect
▪️ Reasonable adjustments

The NHS must meet the CQC regulatory requirements of the Accessible Information Standard (AIS)

#NoToYourPronouns

🔹People with communication disabilities have rights.

🔹People with disabilities have rights.

🔹We must do everything within our power to uphold those rights.

👉🏻 For more info: womensrights.network/disability-dis…

#NoToYourPronouns

Info from @_preston_writes at loupreston.substack.com

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