COVID lockdown demonstrated old-fashioned gender behavioral patterns

• Author: JERUSALEM POST STAFF
• Published date: 03 October 2021
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

When the lockdown was first imposed in March, telephone communications saw a drastic rise in duration – but mostly by women. Women-to-women calls were 1.5 times longer than before the lockdown, and calls from men to women were nearly twice as long. Conversations between two men lengthened as well, but only by 66%.

"Literature from the social sciences provides evidence—mostly from small surveys, polls, or interviews—that women tend to choose more active strategies to cope with stress, such as talking with others," said Georg Heiler, one of the authors of the paper that was published in Scientific Reports. "Our study would confirm that."

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The Hub, which operates within an international network of institutions and attempts to address complex issues of the 21st century, saw the drastic change in public lifestyle imposed by the virus as an opportunity to conduct a social experiment on communications and behavioral patterns.

The researchers received access to anonymized telecommunications data from a major Austrian service and analyzed phone call frequency and duration, as well as travel patterns of the users before, during and after lockdown.

Besides the length of phone calls, the data revealed an interesting trend regarding mobility. While women tended to adhere to government directives and...