Do men and women “lockdown” differently? Examining Panama’s Covid-19 sex-segregated social distancing policy

Liana Woskie and Clare Wenham

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: State-enforced curtailment of mobility – through social distancing and national or subnational lockdowns – has become a key tool to reduce COVID-19 transmission. Panama instituted a sex-segregated mobility policy to limit people’s circulation whereby women were allowed to leave the home for essential services on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday; and men on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Through a retrospective analysis of Global Positioning System (GPS) data, this paper presents an overview of aggregate mobility patterns in Panama following the policy implementation. The paper looks at relative mobility for women and men, examining differences by volume and type of movement. The results identify lower visits to all community location categories on women-mobility days; however, we find no statistically significant difference in aggregate mobility to workplaces. The results discuss the implications of these findings and the ethical questions raised regarding the use of sex and gender identity in COVID-19 policies.

Keywords: Covid-19; sex; gender; social isolation; social mobility; coronavirus (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I18 J68 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 18 pages
Date: 2021-04-03
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Published in Feminist Economics, 3, April, 2021, 27(1-2), pp. 327 - 344. ISSN: 1354-5701

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:106228

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