Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, men have been consistently less likely to report wearing a protective face mask. There are several possible reasons for this difference, including partisanship and gender identity. Using a national live-caller telephone survey that measures gender identity, we show that men's gender identities are strongly related to their views of mask wearing, especially when gender identity is highly salient to the individual. The effects of this interaction of sex and gender are shown to be separate from the effects of partisanship. While partisanship is a significant driver of attitudes about face masks, within partisan groups, men who report “completely” masculine gender identities are very different from their fellow partisans.

Research has long observed the absence of gender in child care policy, media, and elections. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has invoked critical questions about child care and its importance to states’ economic recoveries around the world. In this research note, we analyze news coverage of child care in major Canadian daily newspapers to explore whether and how news narratives regarding child care are shifting in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, are we seeing a focus on women and gender in child care coverage amid the compounding pressures that women face in the current social and economic climate? The results of our analysis suggest that the pandemic has not shifted the conversation on child care and that current coverage principally reflects long-standing trends in child care framing. We find that gender remains systematically written out of coverage of child care, occluded by a larger focus on health-, economic-, and accessibility-related concerns about child care services.

Households in Canada and Australia have exhibited similar trends in the gendered allocation of additional child care responsibilities resulting from policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. In this article, we employ survey data to analyze the extent to which policy interventions related to COVID-19 have exacerbated gender disparities in child care obligations. We find that existing asymmetrical distributions of child care obligations in Canada and Australia have been amplified during the pandemic, resulting in a disproportionate burden on women. During the pandemic we also find that, in households with children, women tend to report experiencing poorer mental health than men.

Media outlets have reported that women leaders around the globe are managing the COVID-19 crisis better than their male counterparts, responding faster and communicating better about pandemic policies. In this article, we examine empirical data on the timing of policy responses from the Coronavirus Government Response Tracker to determine whether and how countries led by women reacted differently to the pandemic. Exploring the relationship between the gender of leaders and legislators and the timing of stay-at-home orders, school closures, and coordinated public information campaigns, we find no statistical evidence supporting popular claims in the media. However, we find some evidence that the level of gender equality in legislatures is related to school closures, a policy with clear gendered consequences. These conclusions are an important first step in understanding the potentially gendered nature of the crisis response and identifying new avenues for research.

The connection between women leaders and superior pandemic performance is likely spurious. This narrative overlooks that women currently govern precisely the kinds of countries that should mount effective pandemic responses: wealthy democracies with high state capacity. This article maps where women currently serve as presidents and prime ministers. The article then uses data from the Varieties of Democracy Project and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development to show that many women-led countries score high on state capacity and that high-capacity states have low coronavirus mortality regardless of whether they are led by women or by men. Arguments emphasizing women chief executives’ superior pandemic performance, while offered in good faith, are misleading.

The COVID-19 pandemic has gendered implications for women's time and resources. The use of informal institutions that pose obstacles to women's electoral viability may also be particularly consequential at a time of rapid change, when election dates and procedures are being amended because of health concerns. Together, these dynamics suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic may impact women's electoral participation, support, and viability in meaningful ways. The November 2020 Brazilian municipal elections provide an opportunity to explore this. Employing data from an original survey of eligible individuals and aspirant candidates, we find that the main obstacle to women's representation is not personal political ambition or efforts but women's perceptions of their access to support for their candidacies. In the face of greater challenges, resilient aspirants are choosing to work harder to compensate for potential losses in campaign support and funds.

As governments tackle the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, both the role of women in governments and the specific effect of the pandemic on women have come under scrutiny. This research note examines the descriptive representation of women in the U.K. government's response to the coronavirus. It finds that 43% of the government's daily press briefings featured an all-male lineup with no female politician or expert present. In particular, female politicians are missing, with only one female cabinet member ever leading the briefing. Women's (in)visibility raises concerns about the legitimacy of democratic decisions and likely has policy consequences: women's absence may exacerbate gendered inequalities resulting from the crisis.

COVID-19 and its associated disease control measures have greatly altered everyday life. The burden of these challenges has fallen disproportionately on women. Drawing on qualitative inquiry in agrarian north India and Nepal, this research note analyzes how South Asian COVID-19 lockdowns have affected women's labor responsibilities in sometimes surprising ways. We find increased responsibilities for caregiving within the household, substantial stress in responding to food insecurity, and growing expectations to fulfill public roles in disease response measures. However, we also find that the return of male migrants and youth has, in some cases, reduced women's farming responsibilities and created opportunities for household togetherness at a time of great uncertainty. We conclude that more research is needed to examine the nuanced aspects of COVID-19's gendered labor impacts to create comprehensive policy responses to address the multiple and sometimes conflicting effects the lockdown has had on agrarian women's informal labor and well-being.

Even before the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, was declared a pandemic, prominent women mayors in the United States enacted proactive and innovative policies to prevent local outbreaks and soften the social and economic repercussions. Several Black women mayors, in particular, have led the way in local pandemic response efforts. This article identifies four major features of these and other women mayors’ early responses. First, women mayors demonstrated proactive leadership even when faced with pushback. Second, these mayors advocated for transparent and evidence-based decision-making at all levels of government. Third, they enacted measures to protect vulnerable communities and reduce disparities. Fourth, they actively shared advice on best practices and lessons learned, and provided examples for other local leaders to follow. The article concludes by situating these responses in the larger research on gender and leadership and asks whether these women's actions are unique or part of a systematic trend of gendered responses to the pandemic.

The global coronavirus pandemic has reified divisions, inequity, and injustices rooted in systems of domination such as racism, sexism, neoliberal capitalism, and ableism. Feminist scholars have theorized these interlocking systems of domination as the “continuum of violence.” Building on this scholarship, we conceptualize the U.S. response to and the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic as reflective of the continuum of violence. We argue that crises like pandemics expose the antidemocratic and exclusionary practices inherent in this continuum, which is especially racialized and gendered. To support our argument, we provide empirical evidence of the continuum of violence in relation to COVID-19 vis-à-vis the interrelated issues of militarization and what feminists call “everyday security,” such as public health and gender-based violence. The continuum of violence contributes theoretically and practically to our understanding of how violence that the pandemic illuminates is embedded in broader systems of domination and exclusion.

In this article, we evaluate gender differences in COVID-19 conspiracy theory beliefs. We find that women are significantly less likely than men to endorse COVID-19 conspiracy theories and that this gender difference cuts across party lines. Our analysis suggests that this gender gap is partially explained by two dispositional factors: learned helplessness and conspiratorial thinking. Our findings qualify past work on the antecedents of conspiracy theory beliefs, which does not uncover robust and significant gender differences. The results highlight the need for work in this area to better theorize about the significance of gender.

A central function of democratic institutions is to protect vulnerable populations. The stability and success of these institutions depends, in part, on popular support. Times of crisis can introduce novel dynamics that alter popular support for protective institutions, particularly among those who do not benefit from those protections. We explore this possibility in the context of Title IX's gender equality requirements and infrastructure to address sexual harassment in college sports. We conduct a large survey of college student-athletes to study their attitudes on these issues in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and concomitant financial challenges affecting college sports. We find that male student-athletes and those with sexist attitudes exhibit alarmingly low levels of support for ensuring the maintenance of equality and sexual harassment policy under Title IX during the COVID-19 crisis and eventual recovery. The results accentuate the vulnerability of certain populations during crises and the importance of maintaining strong institutional policy support during such times.

The COVID-19 pandemic has altered numerous elements of social, political, and economic life. Mask wearing is arguably an essential component of the new normal until substantial progress is made on a vaccine. However, though evidence suggests the practice is a positive for public health and limiting the transmission of COVID-19, there is variation in attitudes toward and practices of mask wearing. Specifically, there appears to be a sex-based divide in mask wearing, with men more likely to resist wearing masks. Utilizing an original survey, we test the correlation between masculinity and mask wearing. We find that identification with norms of masculinity has a significant influence on affective responses toward mask wearing.

With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, many state and local governments were forced to implement necessary policies to contain transmission of the deadly virus. These policies ranged from closing most businesses to more controversial proposals, such as postponing primary elections. In this research note, we examine the role that scientific knowledge and gender played in citizen perceptions of these virus containment policies, both in the general population and among partisans. We find that while a gender gap persists in scientific knowledge, both in the general population and within the parties, women are generally more likely to use this knowledge to inform their policy views on necessary government action during the COVID-19 pandemic. These findings shed light on how knowledge and gender intersect to drive support for government intervention during the time of a severe public health crisis in a partisan America.

Using a national survey of Generation Z conducted in late May 2020, we measure attitudes about the impact of the coronavirus on personal health, financial and job concerns, views about shelter-in-place laws, and 2020 voting intentions. Gen Z women express greater health and economic concerns and support for shelter-in-place measures than their male counterparts, but this gender gap is largely mitigated by party and other covariates. Party also mediates the differences between young male and female voters concerning the influence of the coronavirus on their vote choice in 2020. Notably, women have significantly greater concern about the impact of COVID-19 on their personal financial situation, while Gen Z men express more concern about their personal health amid COVID-19 in more fully specified statistical models. This research contributes to the growing literature that examines not only the sorting effect of party on the gender gap but also how different identities—in this case, generation—can help explain the persistent political divides between men and women.

The United States has the highest number of COVID-19 cases, yet many Americans have responded indifferently toward policies designed to combat the spread of the virus. While nearly all 50 states have implemented some type of stay-at-home policy to encourage social distancing, there has been high variation in the degree of compliance. We argue that this variance is partly driven by gender resentment. Gender resentment reduces trust in female political leaders and thus decreases compliance with government policy and recommendations. Using data from SafeGraph and the 2016 American National Election Study, we demonstrate that the effect of stay-at-home policies on social distancing is reduced when gender resentment increases in states with female leaders. However, when gender resentment is low, there is no difference in the effect of policies on behavior. This research has important implications for understanding unseen barriers that can mediate the efficacy of female political leaders.

During the novel coronavirus pandemic, early data suggested that men were slightly more likely to contract COVID-19 than women, less likely to seek medical attention for the disease, and far more likely to die as a result of COVID-19. While several studies have explored this gender gap, none has attempted to isolate the psychological processes underpinning this phenomenon. In this research note, I suggest that sexism partly explains these differences. Using data from a large (N = 100,689) survey of American adults conducted between March and June 2020 by the Democracy Fund and the University of California, Los Angeles (Nationscape), I find that sexist beliefs, a component of masculine norms, are consistently the strongest predictor of coronavirus-related emotions, behaviors, policy attitudes, and ultimately contracting COVID-19. This study highlights how gender ideology can impact health and impede government public health efforts.

State action to curtail the spread of the coronavirus has meant advising, and sometimes mandating, houses of worship to close to in-person worship. While mostly cooperative, the religious response has been varied and has exposed a hardened, defiant core. Informed by gendered religious worldviews, religious defiance is led by men and disproportionately supported by men. In this article, we document the extent of the defiance as of late March 2020 with our survey data and then investigate how gendered religious worldviews serve to track men to public roles and women to private ones. We attempt to confirm the nature of these effects with a gendered nationalism item and parallel gender gaps in political participation.

The COVID-19 pandemic has undermined the division between the private sphere of the home and the public sphere of politics that has traditionally disadvantaged women political leaders. Whereas male political leaders historically drew on their traditional role as the male head of household to display forms of masculine protectionism toward citizens, women leaders are now able to draw on their traditional motherly role—for example, as the member of the household who traditionally cares for the sick—to display forms of feminine protectionism. As a result, international women leaders have managed to leverage women's role in the home to their advantage in the political sphere. Significantly, an appreciation of traditionally feminine attributes in women political leaders has been displayed in much media coverage, providing more favorable coverage of female political leaders than was previously the case.

The 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic has significantly altered lives across the globe. In the United States, several states attempted to manage the pandemic by issuing stay-at-home orders. In this research note, I examine whether the gender of state policy makers in the executive branch might impact a state's adoption of a stay-at-home order. Using event history analysis, I find that the governor's gender has no impact on the likelihood of a state adopting a stay-at-home order. However, I find that gender plays a significant role for agency heads. Specifically, my analysis shows that states with a female-headed health agency tend to adopt stay-at-home orders earlier than states with a male administrator. These findings shed light on how female leadership in the executive branch may impact public policy regarding COVID-19.