Do Men and Women “Lockdown” Differently? Examining Panama’s Covid-19 Sex-Segregated Social Distancing Policy

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.

HIGHLIGHTS

• Google mobility data provide a novel opportunity to examine population movement during lockdowns.

• Panamanian men appear less strict than women with stay-at-home orders during the COVID-19 lockdown.

• Lockdown policies may restrict women’s public participation.

• Public domestic activities may hold new value and inform household bargaining during COVID-19.

• Policies based on government-indicated sex reproduce inequalities for non-binary individuals.

KEYWORDS:

• Sex
• gender
• COVID-19
• social mobility
• social isolation

JEL Codes:

• J68
• I18

Notes

1 The sex marker on the Panamanian ID card is based on an individual’s biological sex, a moniker assigned at birth based on the sex organs with which a Panamanian is born. The concept of sex is commonly understood as binary (male or female), and the policy was instituted as such. However, approximately 2 percent of the global population may be intersex or have a combination of sex organs. Gender refers to the social attributes associated with being male or female. These attributes, and attendant expectations, may or may not align with an individual’s sex and can vary between contexts. Throughout this piece, we use the terms “men” and “women” as they are used within the national policy. Due to the spectrum of both sex and gender, this categorization is limited.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Liana Woskie

Liana R. Woskie is a PhD candidate in Health Policy and Health Economics at the London School of Economics and a Research Fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health. Her dissertation focuses on the measurement and evaluation of health system performance with a focus on autonomy and reproductive health, utilizing human rights frameworks to identify issues of non–person-centered care. Following the 2014 Ebola outbreak, she served as the coordinator for the Harvard-LSHTM Lancet Report on the Global Response to Ebola and has managed related projects on global governance and accountability in pandemics.

Clare Wenham

Clare Wenham is Assistant Professor of Global Health Policy at the London School of Economics and specializes in global health security policy and its socioeconomic effects. She is currently Co-PI on two funded research projects analyzing the gendered impacts of the COVID-19 outbreak and response. Previously, she has studied the political and socioeconomic impact of Zika, Ebola, and Pandemic Influenza. Trained in international relations and epidemiology, her work aims to analyze the political decisions within epidemiological interventions and policy and the effects of these on everyday women.