ABSTRACT
This chapter examines some important intersections of gender and dying. It provides the gendered and moral influences on experiences near death, and particularly within a hospice environment. In thinking about gender and dying it is first worth revisiting the wider moral and political economy of dying. The research available suggests patients' views of 'a good death' may conflict with the values upon which palliative care is predicated. The importance and centrality of 'dying well' as moral and ethical practice was evident in the participants' accounts, despite the level of emotional labour required. The caring-dying dynamic emerged as embedded in forms of moral practice and reciprocity within the interviews, with talk focusing on the centrality of mutual obligation in shaping the patient-carer relationship. Dying in a hospice is shaped by the presence of normative understandings of 'the good death', but also complex personal and biographical factors.
