Who were the biggest lockdown rule breakers? Partygate poster boy Boris Johnson or Barnard Castle’s most famous tourist Dominic Cummings may spring to mind.
But on a national scale, women were actually the most likely to swerve the rules by a significant margin, according to new research from the University of York.
The survey of nearly 1,700 participants from across the country found women were nearly twice as likely to break lockdown rules than men. (That is, if the male survey participants were truthful in their answers.)
The reason for this unexpected rebellion? Gender inequality, of course.
We know that women shouldered the majority of childcare and homeschooling responsibilities during the pandemic, while maternity services and antenatal support groups remained closed as pubs and football stadiums reopened their doors.
The pandemic’s disproportionate impact on women meant many were forced to break the law.
Lead author of the study, Professor Joe Tomlinson from the Law School at the University of York, said the results were unexpected. But, given a little analysis, they make sense.
“Our findings surprised us because previous studies into compliance have shown that men are much more likely to break the law than women,” he said.
“However, our results are not about women being wilfully non-compliant. Many participants told us how they broke the law by enlisting grandparents to help with childcare or meeting with other mothers for support. They were forming ‘bubbles’ out of necessity before it was officially allowed.”
None of this suggests that women were blasé about rule-breaking. Instead, the research points to a conflict in what women felt they should do, compared to what they had to do.
The researchers found that the main drivers of compliance for lockdown rules were “fear of peer disapproval, the conviction that breaking lockdown rules was morally wrong, and a general commitment to being law abiding”.
The reality is, the lockdown rules were incompatible with women’s lives. And when you look at the demographic of the rule makers, it’s easy to see why.
Women were dramatically underrepresented across all Covid advisory boards, according to research by the Fawcett Society.
Just 34% of pandemic advisory board members were women in November 2021 when the research was conducted. And at the height of the pandemic, only two out of 56 government press briefings were led by a female politician.
The data revealed how women were underrepresented across all Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) and related subgroups. These are the people informing politicians – and ultimately influencing policy that impacts women’s lives.
Jemima Olchawski, CEO of the Fawcett Society, previously told HuffPost UK that this lack of representation may have made life harder for women.
“The pandemic has laid bare deep-rooted inequalities across the UK. Yet it is women who have borne the brunt and often largely invisible from debate and excluded from decision-making. Women of colour, disabled women, young women and mothers have been at the sharpest end,” she said.
“It begs the question then, what if more women were at the table and making key decisions, would women across our society have felt the impact of political decisions throughout the pandemic so severely?”
So before you judge a woman for breaking the rules, it’s probably worth asking: did she actually have a choice?