Generations at Riverview

As it turns out, you may have more reason to worry about nursing home abuse if your relative is female. It has long been known that women are more likely to be victims of assault and abuse at some point in their lives than men, and that risk does not decline as they age. While most abusers are a woman’s male family member or friend, women are also more likely to be abused in a nursing home.

There are a number of reasons why women are more likely to suffer nursing home abuse. First, they are smaller than men and thus easier to victimize. They are easier to hurt and less able to fight back. This is especially true of elderly women whose frailty makes them even more vulnerable than when they were younger. Their smaller bodies may also be more susceptible to the dangers of medical malpractice, such as receiving the wrong dosage of medicine.

Like younger women or elderly women receiving care at home, women in nursing homes suffer sexual abuse disproportionately to men. Again, they are easier targets. They are also less likely to report sexual abuse than younger women, perhaps due to generational attitudes, fear of their abuser, or poor cognitive and communication functions. Unfortunately, older women are more likely to sustain more serious injuries from sexual assault than younger women, especially if they do not receive immediate medical attention.

A third factor that contributes to female nursing home abuse is their longer life expectancy. Because women live longer, they are more likely than men to live in a nursing home and to live in one longer. Data shows that 52% of women and only 33% of men will require nursing home services during their lifetime, and at last count, 66% of current nursing home residents were women. The longer an individual is in nursing home care, the more chance they have of being abused there.

Finally, as mentioned above, many women never report abuse, which allows it to continue. It is estimated that only 1 in 13 cases of nursing home abuse across the board gets reported. But female nursing home residents seem even less likely to report abuse than men.

It’s hard to say why, but they may fear retaliation more, have had experiences of not being believed before, feel distrustful of law enforcement or the legal system, worry about being shamed or blamed, suffer from poor mental health, worry that their pain will be felt by loved ones, or feel societal pressures to “not be a bother.” The loss of control of one’s life while living in nursing home care may further exacerbate these feelings.

While plenty of men suffer all types of abuse in nursing homes too, some factors put women more at risk. Most nursing homes do a good job of protecting all of their residents from the dangers of abuse, but as reports of nursing home abuse rise across the country, it’s obvious that many others do not.

It often falls to families to help protect their loved ones–male and female–living in nursing homes from neglect and abuse. Recognizing some of the risk factors, such as those that make women more vulnerable, can help.