Gender differences and mask wearing: an observational study on a University campus and a mini-meta-analysis

Research informed by evolutionary theory has suggested that, all else being equal, men are expected to take greater risks than women. This has been evidenced in a range of domains, including health prevention behaviours. In this study, gender differences in mask wearing were recorded at three locations on a University campus (n = 1,435). Logistic regression and Bayes Factor analyses demonstrated that the data do not support a gender difference in mask wearing. This led us to supplement our findings with a mini-meta-analyis, synthesising the gender difference reported in ten papers (n = 73,493) observing mask wearing during the COVID-19 pandemic. This analysis is supportive of a weak effect whereby women are more inclined to wear a mask than men (OR = 1.54, 95% CI = 1.26 to 1.88). However, the mini-meta-analysis also suggested a considerable amount of heterogeneity. Our research calls for further work assessing the factors explaining this heterogeneity in the observed gender difference in mask wearing.