Dealing with a Crisis: Does Covid-19 Promote Traditional Gender Roles?

Abstract

The Covid-19 crisis has many characteristics susceptible to emphasize gendered prescriptions. In the present research, we argue that the Covid-19 crisis should promote citizenship behaviors (CB) consistent with gender stereotypes. Two preregistered experiments were conducted during lockdown in France (Study 1) and United Kingdom (Study 2). We manipulated the salience of the Covid-19 crisis using a fake newspaper article and showed that women were more likely than men to engage in CB of altruism and sacrifice. Meta-analysis results of the two studies confirmed that these gender differences were larger when the Covid-19 crisis was highly salient (vs. control condition). For women, more than for men, engaging in altruistic behaviors and making sacrifice for the greater good are perceived as the behaviors to endorse to cope with the Covid-19 crisis.

Βurnout among primary healthcare professionals during COVID-19 pandemic: A need for timely identification strategies to increase the resilience of the Greek health system

“…Even though our study did not find any significant association between gender and an increased likelihood of burnout, female PHPs would abstain from conversations pertaining to transmission risks, in order to prevent causing distress to their family members and protect them, while male participants demonstrated a greater propensity for working overtime. These differences may be explained by the COVID-19 crisis which had the potential to elicit responses from individuals that align with traditional gender stereotypes emphasizing the tendency of women to be more protective and nurturing, and men to be more assertive by engaging in more potentially risky tasks 26 .…”