Women Are Consistently More Pro-Lockdown, Study Finds
Scanning the British media, you’d be hard-pressed to find an obvious gender difference in attitudes to lockdown. There are both men and women represented among prominent lockdown proponents, as well as among prominent lockdown sceptics.
Which makes a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences last year all the more interesting. Vincenzo Galasso and colleagues analysed data from a survey carried out in eight OECD countries (including Italy, the U.K. and Australia) in March–April of 2020.
The survey measured respondents’ concern about the pandemic, their attitudes to lockdown measures such as closing schools and ‘non-essential’ businesses, and their self-reported compliance with government restrictions (see here for a full list of measures).
What did the researchers find? Across all eight countries (with the exception of Austria in the second wave), women were more likely than men to be concerned about the pandemic. They were also more likely to support lockdown measures, and reported greater compliance with government restrictions.
These findings are shown in the chart below. Note: “Overall agreement” corresponds to a measure of agreement with lockdown measures, while “Overall Compliance” corresponds to a measure of self-reported compliance. The units on the y-axis are percentage points.
As the chart indicates, the gender differences were not huge: women were about seven percentage points more pro-lockdown than men. But they were robust, and not explained by demographic characteristics like age, education or occupation type.
The finding that women are more pro-lockdown is somewhat surprising, given that COVID-19 appears to be more lethal for men. After all, you might expect groups that are at higher risk to be more in favour of restrictions.
The authors suggest that women’s greater compliance with government restrictions could help to explain the gender gap in risk of death from COVID-19, though I suspect any contribution is small. Women mount stronger immune responses to most pathogens, and this almost certainly explains why COVID-19 is more lethal in men.
Interestingly, the two Western states at the extreme ends of the ‘containment spectrum’ – New Zealand (the most restrictive) and South Dakota (the least) are both led by women. This illustrates that moderate gender differences in attitudes only go so far in explaining actual differences in policy.
The researchers’ finding is nonetheless interesting, and their paper is worth reading in full.
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I know everyone gets bent out of shape about generalisations in this day and age, but this study is hardly surprising. The whole hysteria has been quite feminine in nature, and it’s always the feminine soyboy men who are the most pro-mask and pro-vax.
No disrespect to the many great women (particularly mothers) opposing this tyranny
Too late for ‘no disrespect’ my friend! Sad to see your comment, but hey …
Whatever. It was poorly worded, but I stand by it (understood correctly). Men and women do have different dispositions on average, but the world needs both.
Yes, poorly worded. And yes, vive la difference!
I find this very hard to believe. At most of the anti-lockdown event there seems slightly more women. Who am I to question a “study”
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That’s true, our SITP is 75% female.
Two thumbs downs from the ‘feminine soyboy men’, I see…
I would proffer that it’s related to our primal instincts; men as hunter gatherers, women nurturing the next generation. But those kind of opinions are wrong-think nowadays so I won’t.
in my experience the lockdown fanatics are middle class, not at risk and are virtue signalling their help for others (who mainly don’t want it)
I’ve never seen a survey of the ‘at risk’ group (80 year olds and care home residents). probably because it will give an answer that doesn’t fit the panic-based narrative
I think there’s a lot of truth to this. The white collar – ‘work from home’ crowd – have not had any incentives to push back against lockdowns, mandatory vaccines etc. Similarly, those who have nice houses with nice gardens in nice parts of the country have had little need to get away from their stifling home surroundings.
Yes. I for one have never been terribly persuaded by someone telling me they want to help me while threateningly pointing a gun (or a needle) at me.
There was an article in the Guardian (where else …) about this, must have been 12 months ago or so. The psychologists/sociologists basically said just that, that men generally took more risks than women. This, of course, was categorised as “toxic masculinity”.
If I recall my years at school, men tend to be more scientifically minded than women, and less empathetic… Men will therefore be less likely to succumb to emotional appeals, and more likely to question what they are told.
More recent life experiences make me think men are more likely to be getting on with work and spend less time on social media, so are less likely to be badgered into believing the bullshit.
Weird that you’d pick a photo of a horse as opposed to a human female to accompany the article.
A sociopathic one
…one o’ them demon horses. Like Mr. Ed.
Yep, that’s a face only a mare could love.
A face, indeed, that launched a thousand ships – to escape!
Like that’s even a possibility from the Alcatraz Antipodes.
I always thought that was a NZ horse, but I actually think I spotted it hanging upside-down in that picture, elsewhere here, of the bats in the Wuhan cave – its politics would make sense then – well to some…
Ah yes, ‘women’. I rest my case.
Well, I’m a woman, and am emphatically NOT in favour of lockdown.
Or masks, or jabs, or social distancing, or vax passes, or sanitising everything that moves….I’m against all of the security theatre nonsense.
I think that the past 18 months has been a complete and utter shit show, and I want none of it!
That’s the slightly maddening thing about averages. They enlighten and obfuscate at the same time.
It’s probably true that women on the whole are more risk averse than men. But that information does nothing to help you predict whether a particular woman is more risk averse than a particular man.
“But that information does nothing to help you predict whether a particular woman is more risk averse than a particular man.” On the contrary, that’s exactly what it does and why we are evolved to make heavy use of such generalisations. They are heuristics, mental short cuts that allow rapid decisions to be made when information is limited. The stronger the truth underlying the generalisation, the more often the heuristic will allow the correct assessment to be made, but in statistical terms, more correct decisions will be made by employing the generalisations (if they have any truth, and assuming the context is kept correct), than by not using them. One of the most famous examples of this was of the notorious US black identity lobby race-baiter Jesse Jackson in 1998: “There is nothing more painful for me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start to think about robbery and then look around and see it’s somebody white and feel relieved.” He said that (obviously) with no joy, but because it was absolutely correct. Statistically, if you respond with more alertness in the situation he describes based on the racial heuristic,… Read more »
In terms of Popper’s commonly used research method definition, your ‘baseline assumption’ is a hypothesis.
It is tested, and the hypothesis or null-hypothesis is chosen on the basis of probability.
The next stage is to look at the result in terms of real world significance
In this case, the hypothesis is weakly supported in probability terms, and of little significance/certainty for the real world on the basis of this study.
If this was a survey report on a potential house purchase in terms of the safety of the edifice and it’s foundations, I wouldn’t be buying.
You appear to have introduced a category error. Daily life is not scientific research, or philosophical debate.
What is mildly interesting, though unsurprising based on another plausible generalisation, is your very evident and very urgent personal need to contest any such perfectly reasonable generalisations as this one (see my mention of “preferr[ing] ideological correctness to reality”).
Stop using big words you don’t understand.
This isn’t a ‘category error’ – it’s directly about a piece of research posted here that doesn’t, in fact, fit your ‘generalization’ – aka ‘prejudices’.
Sorry that you flail and fail when your preconceptions are challenged. But that’s really your problem about an inability to address issues when your assertions are challenged with actual analysis.
My ‘personal need’ – so called – is a desire to challenge innumerate bullshit, because there’s enough of it around in the Covid shit-show, without proponents here poncing around, using it as a pulpit for their alternative version.
“Stop using big words you don’t understand.
This isn’t a ‘category error’ – it’s directly about a piece of research posted here that doesn’t, in fact, fit your ‘generalization’ – aka ‘prejudices’.”
If you’d have actually given it some thought instead of jumping in all excited thinking you had an opportunity for more personal abuse, you’d have recognised that the category error was where you responded to my talking about baseline assumptions (you even quoted my words) made for use in rapid decision-making heuristic purposes with irrelevant stuff about hypothesizing for long reasoning purposes.
And it absolutely was a category error.
“big words you don’t understand…you flail and fail….an inability to address issues…etc“
There’s scope for some interesting personality analysis surrounding your remarkably persistent, regular and prompt resort to personal abuse when confronted with particular kinds of issues.
“It’s probably true that women on the whole are more risk averse than men.”
Might or might not be true. But this doesn’t provide any strong evidence of the fact.
An objective summary would be that men and women appear, on average, to have much the same responses to risk.
As said elsewhere – these findings are of much the same quality as the research suggesting that masks are useful.
It’s probably true that women on the whole are more risk averse than men.
Unless it’s possible to define risk aversity such that it can be (objectively) measured, ie, not by relying on stories people tell about hypothetical situations it’s a completely useless pseudocriterion.
NB: I can’t imagine how this could be done.
Agree. The findings are total BS. No disrespect but men particularly good at this.
The BS is true if interpreted as other than pretty insignificant/weak – but not the following counter-generalisation.
Me too, Hypatia. I’m surprised at the number of men I see, young and old, wearing masks. Yesterday I was in the dentist’s waiting area, the only female with 6 males…..and the only one maskless.
“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”
Hopefully we are at phase 4 but moving into 1 here, the longer it goes on for the more extreme the snap back required will be.
Not surprising at all.
It is security(they think) versus freedom.
On the security vs freedom spectrum women will always be more towards security than men.
Re. Compliance, think back to school.
Were boys or girls more compliant with rules in general?
The rules at school were far more focused on controlling boys – it was easy for girls to comply with rules that really weren’t aimed at curbing their natural tendencies.
Bullying amongst schoolgirls is rife and seemingly completely unacknowledged, while boys’ tendency to deck one another is smothered with layers and layers of pansifying nonsense.
You can see this playing out in social media. Because boys, as you say, tend to deck one-another, social media has not had so much influence. But girls tend to attack verbally and emotionally, so social media has given that tendency a field day. Witness how mental problems amongst girls has risen much faster than amongst boys.Oh, sorry, toxic masculinity, I forgot. I shall go and think about my male privilege.
This precise point was made recently by evolutionary biologist Bret Weinstein last time he sat down with Joe Rogan.
“After all, you might expect groups that are at higher risk to be more in favour of restrictions.”
not really. the ‘at risk’ group are old, have had their lives and love their children and grandchildren. I would expect the most at risk group to most favour battling on and not bed-wetting.
Lower middle class women who work from home, I would say.
Yes, it is mainly lower-class women, they are the insecure control freaks.
Agreed.
‘lower class’? How condescending.
Without the working class shovelling your shit, delivering your parcels and fixing your appliances, semi-detached middle-class pansies would not even be able to survive.
Should have been Lower Middle class, apologies.
Not sure that it has anything to do with class (however that is defined), but in my experience from colleagues and acquaintances the most militant pro-restriction demographic was women in their 30s (and especially so with those who were told to ‘work from home’).
Self-declaration bias, I suspect. Men are more likely to be Bolshie and tell it like it is without worrying about upsetting the interviewer.
I’m a woman and I don’t approve of Lockdown or mask mandates. I’m the most introverted rebel I know.
There will be lots of men here would happily tell you you’re an exception to their rule about what women are. How tiring it is, as a woman, to hear the same prejudices over and over again.
“The finding that women are more pro-lockdown is somewhat surprising, given that COVID-19 appears to be more lethal for men.”
Not at all surprising for three reasons.
First, it’s what I’ve generally observed, though it’s also very obviously been a fairly weak effect. There are a lot of very strong lockdown resisters who are women, and there are lots of complete bedwetters who are men. But there does seem to be some tilt in the gender balance towards more women supporting.it than men.
Second, it’s what I’d have predicted, because women have always had this kind of slight tilt towards supporting nanny state attitudes and measures, which seems to make sense as a result of female roles and attitudes (generalised). Again, a relatively weak signal, with many great fighters for liberty being women and many of the worst nanny staters being men (partly perhaps because men have a strong tendency to try to signal political and social attitudes that they think will win female approval).
Third, the whole covid panic is based upon unreason and lying, manipulative propaganda. Why would anyone expect attitudes to correspond to reasoned analysis of risks in any aspect?
“Women Are Consistently More Pro-Lockdown, Study Finds“
Interesting, but not particularly surprising to me, for the reasons I have set out.
What would be interesting would be the numbers on “vaccination”. I’d predict less of a tilt and possibly even a tilt the other way on that, though it’s harder to judge from experience because “vaccination” came later and attitudes were all mixed up with preexisting lockdown/mask attitudes.
But my feeling is that the slight tilt in favour of men resisting lockdowns was perhaps corrected when the issues became “vaccination”, and especially forced “vaccination” and “vaccination” of children.
Doubt it: I think the same gender difference would be observed, i.e. women more pro-vaccine. In Australia there was some early survey data that purported to show that young women were the most vaccine-hesitant group in the community. As it has turned out the most vaccine-hesitant group, in terms of numbers not getting vaccinated, has been older men (in their 50s and 60s).
You might be right. But that’s one of the reasons it would be interesting to see the numbers….
I do know someone who is bought into the covid narrative but is not vaxxed. She’s pregnant. Aversion to risking the health of her unborn child overrode her otherwise strong tendency to go along with covid nonsense.
Warn her not to get vaxxed just after birth. There is evidence that the spike protein gets into breast milk and does nasty things to the infants gut. Japanese study IIRC.
Thanks
I will do that
I also remember a study in the past that women care more than men about whether other people like them or not. All ties in…
Yes, let’s hope that women here are not going to take this personally…it does say ‘more likely’. Obviously there will be lots of exceptions! (eg me!)
Sounds like more BS to try to divide everyone. Pretty much anyone you speak to for a bit is completely anti-lockdown. The pro-lockdown groups are extremely rare but media and polling companies have conspired to make us believe lockdown sceptics are in the minority. Don’t believe it for a second.
Nearly 50% of all posts on FB that relate to the vax, are antivax ( or misinformation apparently ).
I don’t think the intention is to divide, more just to fill up space or possibly because it might illuminate how we got here and how we get out. But it might have the effect of dividing us.
Like all attempts to generalise about what side of the line people fall on, it will upset some and please others and as such I think it’s only worthwhile if it helps us to understand the pro-lockdown mindset and mechanisms a bit better. I’m not sure it does help much.
FWIW I expect the observation made is true – women are generally higher in agreeableness and agreeableness is a quality that the covid scam exploits very well. I’m male, but I am a white collar, work from home person with a nice house in a nice part of the country, to quote another post in this comments section. Unvaxxed and anti lockdown.
I should add that in my experience the media portrayal of levels of support for lockdown and vaxxing is not that inaccurate – most people I know are vaxxed and have bought into the covid narrative.
Off topic, but is it me or is there less covid crap in the media and is this just the lull before the next covid shit storm?.
(Never ever trust or believe a politician. Question everything and if it’s from the festering gob of a politician doubly so).
I’ve noticed this as well. I interpret this as generally good sign: Considering that COVID is pretty much a non-event on its own, the less media attention it gets, the less the result of that media attention will interfere with everybody’s lifes.
Women are consistently more likely to be public sector employees, and women are consistently more likely to be paid at home during lockdown.
I’ve spoken to a few blokes that are completely lost causes, so go figure..
I read in 2016 that if women only had voted in the states or men only then the election would have been a landslide one way or the other. I think that polling does show that women consistently are much more in favour of the state interfering to “help” people, at least in our societies.
So, I don’t think that it’s surprising to find that women poll this way. Anecdotally, most of the people that I know who are pro-lockdown are female. I don’t know many people who are pro-lockdown, but they’re almost all women. And the people who are obeying the rules that I know are mostly women as well. Obviously, not all, some of the most anti-lockdown people I know are women as well. Averages and aggregates are not representative of individuals.
Most of the people that I meet are anti-lockdown, but I fear that may be a biased sample because I only meet people who are not afraid to go out in public. The few pro-lockdown people that I know are friends that I know well enough to still communicate with even though they are hiding at home, so a pretty small sample set.
I was tarred, feathered and run out of town last year when I pointed out that this was likely to be true.
And lo, I was correct.
Women are at once natural authoritarians and natural conformists.
What utter bullshit.
from many London marches the spilt is remarkably 50/50, and the woman/young girls have been especially brave confronting the police
I (a woman, obviously,) went on the three early antilockdown marches, and there were hardly any men to be seen! There was a massive disproportion of women.
It was quite a relief when the men finally turned up.
It could be that there are more anti lockdown men but the anti lockdown women are more likely to go on marches
Other than as a point of interest, I am not sure what purpose is served by this study or by DS covering it. Unless it reveals something about how we got here and how we get out of it – but I don’t think it does. I think we need to focus on character traits and arguments that appeal to those character traits.
It has no practical significance. Just a vehicle for disproportionate speculation and axe-grinding, I reckon.
Time to get back to fundamentals ….
The finger Jerks don’t really like rational scepticism. 🙂
Bluntly – these findings are of the same quality and marginality as studies used to justify masking.
Sauce for the goose …
Note another feature of Jerk low intelligence – they never learn 🙂
I’m not sure this has much significance : “ gender differences were not huge:” or is particularly interesting in the great scheme of things Covid.
You certainly can’t draw any useful conclusions from the study. An interesting illustration of the difference between statistical and real-world significance.
I don’t think a 7-point difference is small.
I do. Particularly in terms of the nature of the research and the confidence range.
… but I wouldn’t expect a finger Jerk to grasp that sort of issue.
Women are more risk averse as a population. When you survey investment risk for example, women are around 10% more risk averse. Women prefer safer cars. Evolutionarily speaking, this likely has to do with the need to protect children. As to compliance and desiring more government action, we have some data in other settings that women report more compliance with rules but behaviors (beyond Covid rules) tend to be within margins of being the same as men. But women back more government action across the spectrum from regulation to employment contracts (see the US Women’s Football team for an example).
This may also explain why mothers are opposed to vaccinating teens, given their low levels of risk and the unknown risks of vaccines longterm with kids.
Incitement to hatred – do we really have to fall for nanny’s diversiveness every time? It’s designed to manipulate those that didn’t fall for project fear into violence so that nanny gets the excuse to hit us all even harder. I do not fit into any box, nor does anyone else, we’re persons, not clones or computers
Here’s one woman who’s bucking the trend, then.
Yes indeed – and, of course, even on the basis of this unstable construction, most women do.
I don’t recommend innumeracy as basis for generalizations, even if the government are keen on cultivating mushrooms 🙂
Good on you!
There’s nothing interesting in another junk study demonstrating the prejudices of the people who conducted it. Why not use different hair colours to group people? That’s bound to result in some difference in different groups as well. Or what about shoe sizes? Or nose shapes, to include a classic in here as well.
The only sensible use such statistics can be put to is print them as hardcover edition and hit the authors on the head with it.
Not this one! I’ve been against lockdowns and masks right from the start and have never wavered. I would normally say ‘the difference between men and women is sex, not gender’ but, in this case, I think socialised sex differences (which is what ‘gender’ is) are what make people who behave in more traditionally ‘feminine’ ways more pro-lockdown. I find myself unusual among my female friends in that I did not react emotionally to the ‘pandemic’. As I do in all circumstances, I read and analysed the evidence and the statistics and arrived at a rational conclusion. That was that the risk to me was minimal and that I wasn’t going to worry about it anymore, although I would do everything possible (healthy food, sunlight, exercise, Vitamin D in winter) to maximise my own immune response. That conclusion has not changed. In contrast, female friends, along with the more ‘woke’ men (several of whom are friends no longer) have been completely hysterical in their fear, or have prioritised virtue signalling to show that they ‘care’. No doubt the ‘woke’ would say that I was ‘really’ a man, or perhaps I’ve just spent too much time with farmers, but none of… Read more »
Western women contribute far less value to their economies than men, despite every effort to bring men down to their level, yet they have consistently voted for the expansion of government into a nanny state. It’s very difficult to see how the welfare state, mass immigration and the intrusion of the state into every aspect of our lives happens without the votes of women and an army of henpeckers to enforce it. The whole introduction of women into the workforce was sold to women for entirely selfish reasons, so they could be “liberated” from their male oppressors and serve come corporate masters instead and spend whatever money they made on useless consumer rubbish. It certainly didn’t benefit their families to have 2 breadwinners for the price of 1. They make 80% of household spending decisions despite generating less than 30% of the income. They vote for every big government intervention while not even considering how to pay for it. But this whole Covid nonsense is the cherry on the cake. It was World War 2 sold to women on every level. A massive neurotic clean-fest where an army of Karens could be galvanised to hector everyone into submission. I can’t… Read more »
I don’t. I have never lived off a man in my life (including as a child) and I despise women who do and the men who keep them.
Do not make your misogynistic generalisations about me.
Who said anything about “living off a man”? You haven’t even read what I’ve written and you presume to label me as a misogynist. Typical.
It certainly didn’t benefit their families to have 2 breadwinners for the price of 1. They make 80% of household spending decisions despite generating less than 30% of the income.
For instance. Not literally, obviously. But the implication that 30% of the income cannot be enough to pay for the needs of 100% of the family and hence, everybody is living “off the man” to some degree is pretty strong.
It’s not “the needs of the family” I’m referring to. It’s the ridiculously profligate spending of the government and the wastage on status driven, lifestyle expenses. Entire industries are devoted to parting families with their money and they all know to appeal to women.
And the government drives almost all of their policymaking with emotional and irresponsible messaging to get the tearjerking ladies to pass it and then rigorously enforce it. If it were only “the needs of the family” that women were concerned with, I wouldn’t have a leg to stand on, but the fact is that women spend all this money then have the nerve to initiate over 80% of divorces when they get bored.
Most Western women are not even bothering to have kids any more, so they don’t see the needs of any family to be their concern.
Sorry about the ‘goldfish’ quip. It’s unthoughtful and inaccurate.
They don’t produce that amount of shite in a day.
Women leave men because they are boring. They don’t have children because they don’t want to be stuck living with a boring man.
They also loathe misogynistic incels.
Or me.
What did I say about axe-grinding?
I don’t know, what did you say? How am I supposed to remember things you say?
Yes – sorry, it’s a bit of an ask of a goldfish. 🙂
Christ – 77th Brigade et al. must be sitting back, splitting their sides at some of the brainless shite posted on this topic – that is, if they’re not writing it.
Of course. Because everyone who isn’t a goldfish has “RickH” emblazoned on the insides of their eyelids. Everyone knows where they were the last time they heard the teachings of “RickH”.
Women work longer hours than men in EVERY SOCIETY.
You have not noticed this because the majority of women’s work is not recognised in monetary terms.
Only male work is classed as “work” Female work is not important.
This is exactly the kind of nonsense I’m talking about. Go and look at the actual facts and figures before saying things like this. What kind of “work” are you referring to? Domestic work? You think men don’t do domestic work these days on top of all the other work? The stuff they actually get paid for because it provides value to somebody else? You want to get paid without providing value to anyone and then blame society for it? Even children don’t do that.
Oh dear, perhaps find a group on Facebook, I imagine there must be one for fellows such as yourself that need to vent. Best of luck.