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.

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 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.

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.

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.

How does the gender of a political leader affect policy compliance of the public during a public health crisis? State and national leaders have taken a variety of policy measures to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, with varying levels of success. While many female leaders have been credited with containing the spread of COVID-19, often through implementing strict policy measures, there is little understanding of how individuals respond to public health policy recommendations made by female and male leaders. This article investigates whether citizens are more willing to comply with strict policy recommendations about a public health issue when those recommendations are made by a female leader rather than a male leader. Using a survey experiment with American citizens, we compare individuals’ willingness to comply with policy along three dimensions: social distancing, face covering, and contact tracing. Our findings show that a leader's gender has little impact on policy compliance in general during the pandemic. These findings carry important implications for successful crisis management as well as understanding how a crisis in a nonmasculine issue context influences the effectiveness of a leader's ability to implement measures to mitigate the crisis.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Growing research shows a correlation between gender, benevolent sexism, partisanship, and COVID-19 public health compliance. We show first that women are more likely than men to engage in protective behaviors to slow the spread of COVID-19. We also find that while Republicans and Independents are less likely to comply with these measures, benevolent sexism moderates the effect of partisanship and can increase compliance. These results suggest that framing public health directives in terms of chivalry and protection activates benevolent sexism, potentially offsetting patterns of noncompliance associated with partisanship. We discuss the negative consequences of these results and posit a need for bipartisan messages to reduce reliance on benevolent sexism in the future.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 fundamentally changed all aspects of American life, including, for many, how we vote. We explore the question of who supports unrestricted absentee ballots during a pandemic. We argue that women are more likely to support absentee ballots because they allow for greater flexibility and minimize the potential for exposure. We test this theory using the National Panel Study of COVID-19 (n = 1,892), which asked respondents about their preferences for absentee ballots, their worry about the coronavirus, and their household composition. Using multinomial logistic regressions, we find that women are more likely to support allowing absentee ballots compared with more restrictive voting options and are more likely to say they support absentee ballots for all if they know someone who has contracted COVID-19. The policy implications for these findings are discussed along with other sociodemographic indicators in our analysis.