What do women want?For men to get the COVID vaccine

Jennifer Steinhower Screenplay Works

Holly Elgison and Len Schillaci are a mixed vaxxed couple and they are not alone.

“I always intended to be 100% vaccinated,” said Eldison, a medical claims auditor in Barico, Florida.

Her husband, a disaster insurance assessor, said he would pass. “To be honest with you, I think the worst of COVID is behind us,” Schillaci said. “I’m good.”

The Biden administration is trying to vaccinate 80% of adult Americans by the summer, so continuing to hate men being shot can hinder that goal.

The disparity between men and women is almost nationally equal, but women are vaccinated at a much higher rate (about 10 percentage points) than men. This trend is worrisome for many, especially as vaccination rates have dropped slightly recently.

There are many reasons for the Gender Gap in the United States, including the role of women in certain occupations that received early prioritization of vaccines, political and cultural differences, and the long-standing pattern of women who generally accept preventive care over men. It reflects.

The gap is COVID-19 (new coronavirus infection) The death toll worldwide is about 2.4 times higher in men than in women. And this department unravels the reality of women’s disproportionate role in caring for others in American society.

Alison Buttenheim, an associate professor of nursing at the University of Pennsylvania and a vaccine repellent expert, said: “Most professionals are worried about the big gaps between races, political parties, religions, and occupational groups, but many overlap with gender disparities.” I’ve heard about specific initiatives targeting men. there is not.”

In Los Angeles County (compared to 30% of men), where 44% of women over the age of 16 took their first shot, authorities are struggling to find a way to do just that.

“We are very concerned about it and plan to undertake some targeted outreach among men,” said Dr. Paul Simon, chief scientific officer at the Los Angeles County Public Health Department. I am doing it. ” Black and Latino men. According to the latest data available from this early days, only 19% of black men and 17% of Latin men in Los Angeles County are at least once compared to 35% of Asian men and 32% of white men. Have been vaccinated. Month.

“We don’t fully understand that,” Simon said. “One of our message strategies is that vaccines are not only important to you, but also a means of protecting others in your family.”

The initial division of vaccination rates by gender can be explained primarily by demographics. Americans over the age of 70 take the first dose, and women make up the majority of that age group. In many states, healthcare professionals and school teachers have also been given vaccine priorities. Women make up three-quarters of full-time healthcare professionals, and more than 75% of US public school teachers are women.

Inequality indicates where women live both paid and unpaid lives. For example, women lost most of their early jobs in the food service industry, retail, health care, and government jobs. The mother in it did most of the work in the transition to distance learning and the care of parents and sick relatives.

This combination may have motivated the vaccine in two ways. They are trying to protect the rest of their families and are anxious to return to the workforce. Indeed, women are now leading the economic recovery, just as they caused unemployment last year. In March, about 500,000 women joined the workforce. This is partly due to the resumption of face-to-face school education in most parts of the country.

Pilar Gonarons Ponce, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania and a specialist in gender issues, said: “In addition to women being disproportionately represented in some important jobs, women are unpaid care for the elderly. Represented disproportionately as a person. Family and community, and this can also be an additional motivation for obtaining a vaccine. “

In many respects, vaccine patterns reflect long-standing gender differences when it comes to preventive medicine. On average, women are more likely than men to undergo annual health care and are more likely to receive preventive care than men, even when adjusted for existing health conditions and other factors. ..

Men are more likely than women to behave in a way that is harmful to their health, such as heavy drinking, smoking, and the use of illegal drugs, and they are overweight compared to women. According to federal data, men are less likely to see a doctor on a regular basis, go to the emergency room in a crisis situation, and receive basic dental care. Vaccines are no exception. Historically, influenza vaccination is much higher among women (about 63% compared to 53%), and the gap is narrower for Americans over the age of 75.

The· Coronavirus Lindsey Reininger, a health policy researcher and clinical professor at Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business, said:

However, experts say that even in the context of general male health care difficulties, there may be some factors specific to this vaccine that prevent more male shots in the arm. say. Men may not have the patience to navigate systems that are primarily online, as signing up is cumbersome and confusing.

“If it’s more difficult for men to navigate the booking system, we need to know if the inequality is about access,” said Simon, a Los Angeles official.

In addition, other dynamics may be working for the pervasive misinformation, evolving medical advice, and the coronavirus that is the subject of politics.

“Some men have the feeling that they are not always susceptible,” Simon said. “They have weathered this for over a year and feel totipotent.”

Public health and academic experts have long been interested in the “macho” effect that prevents men from receiving all kinds of medical care and fear that this vaccine can exacerbate it. (Especially in the Marine Corps, the military’s most male service, about 40% of people vaccinated by the Pentagon turned it down.)

“This avoidance is associated with the masculinity ideal of men being strong, invincible, and unsolicited,” said Kristen Springer, an associate professor of sociology at Rutgers University in New Jersey, who studied this trait. Says.

“In other words, these cultural ideals guide men to avoid health care that is important for masculine behavior,” she said. “It will be interesting to observe the differences between men and women in vaccination as the vaccine is now available to everyone, because these are gender and gender, such as cultural ideas that” real men “do not. It is likely to reflect social and cultural ideas about health. No preventive medicine is needed. “

At this stage, US health authorities have not released data on non-binary adults and vaccination.

There may also be political ties. Women are much more likely to register as Democrats than men, and polls show that Republicans across the country are much less likely to accept the vaccine than Democrats.

So who do men listen to? It doesn’t seem to be their wife or female friend or doctor. Leah Witus and Erik Larson, professors at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, watched a video of a man and a woman in a recent preprint study that included the same information about vaccines. Of the 1,184 Americans who saw them, most were influenced by male narrators, but female narrators responded much more complexly.

“The male narrated version of the video boosted viewers’ intent to vaccinate,” Witus said. “But what women narrate has a lot to do with vaccine trends, and in some viewers,