Women More Likely To Follow Social Distancing Than Men, Study Finds
And now, new research has revealed that women are more likely to follow safety guidelines that WHO and other medical agencies are suggesting, as compared to men.
This is according to researchers from New York University and Yale University. They looked at the kind of preventative habits that were adopted by hundreds of Americans -- habits like social distancing, hand washing, and wearing a mask, while pandemic is still wreaking havoc in the nation.
They conducted the study using a survey, observing people on the street as well as analysis of movement through GPS data using 15 million smartphone coordinates. The survey looked at 800 Americans and their social distancing practices if any.
In most of the responses, women were shown to be following the practices more religiously than men, except in case of in-person contact with others. In the second phase of their study, researchers looked at 300 pedestrians in three different locations -- New York City, Connecticut and New Jersey. In each of these locations, they looked at how many people wore masks properly -- over their mouth and nose.
The study revealed that 57.7 percent of women wear face masks appropriately while only 42.3 percent of men. They also pointed out that the gender distribution in these areas was almost equal.
In the last phase of their study, they compared how often men or women visited non-essential retailers (like spa, restaurants, fitness facilities etc.) in the US counties. They looked at 15 million smartphone coordinates (data obtained from Unacast) from 3000 counties in the US from March 9 to May 29. As per this data, a higher percentage of men weren’t particular about following social distancing.
Irmak Olcaysoy Okten, a postdoctoral researcher in NYU's Department of Psychology and the paper's lead author explained “Previous research before the pandemic shows that women had been visiting doctors more frequently in their daily lives and following their recommendations more so than men. They also pay more attention to the health-related needs of others. So it's not surprising that these tendencies would translate into greater efforts on behalf of women to prevent the spread of the pandemic.”
Okten added, “Fine-tuning health messages to alert men in particular to the critical role of maintaining social distancing, hygiene, and mask-wearing may be an effective strategy in reducing the spread of the virus.”