Do Men and Women “Lockdown” Differently? An Examination of Panama’s COVID-19 Sex-Segregated Social Distancing Policy

Mobility enables individuals to generate income and is a key input for empowerment and personal autonomy. Curtailment of aggregate social mobility - through policies such as: social distancing recommendations, shelter in place orders and state-enforced lockdowns - has become a primary strategy to address COVID-19 to limit social contact and reduce disease transmission. In this context, a small number of countries have instituted gender or sex-segregated mobility policies (Panama, Peru, and Bogota, Colombia). Through a retrospective analysis of global geographic positioning (GPS) data, this study presents an overview of aggregate mobility in Panama following the country’s implementation of a sex-segregated social distancing policy. Panama was selected as the nationwide sex-segregated policy was enforced throughout the lockdown period. The paper looks at mobility trends on female- and male-sex mobility days, examining differences by volume of movement and type of community locations visited as compared to pre-COVID trends. We find lower visits to all community location categories on female-mobility days. However, we found no significant difference in visits to “workplace” locations on male- v. female-mobility days. The paper discusses the implications of these findings in three areas: (1) Informal burden of labor and social reproduction, (2) Implications for women’s autonomy and safety in the home, and (3) Women’s economic empowerment. In addition, it raises open ethical questions regarding gender identity in COVID-19 policies.