Women are more likely than men to say their lives have changed because of the pandemic

• Pew Research Center surveyed over 14,000 adults in 14 countries about the coronavirus, including questions about how well their nation has managed the pandemic and the pandemic's effects on their own lives.
• The results show women were more likely than men to say their lives have changed by at least a fair amount as a result of coronavirus.
• This could be because women are taking on more unpaid work and because a larger share of women work in part-time jobs that are vulnerable to the economic effects of the pandemic, according to the think tank.
• Pew Research Center found the percentage point differences were statistically significant in 12 of the 14 countries, with differences among these nations between eight and 15 points.

A new poll suggests that women are more likely than men around the world to feel their lives have changed because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Pew Research Center recently surveyed 14,276 adults from June 10 to August 3 in 14 countries with advanced economies, including the US and several countries in Europe.

In addition to showing that residents of different nations feel varying levels of confidence in their country's ability to handle the coronavirus, the survey results show more women than men in each county polled believe their life has changed by a "great deal" or a "fair amount."

The share of women respondents who reported this in Sweden, France, and the US were all at least 15 percentage points higher than the share of men. The think tank found the differences between the sexes in 12 of the 14 countries were statistically significant.

However, respondents of both sexes in Sweden and the US were much more likely to say the coronavirus has changed their lives than respondents in France. In France, 53% of women said their life has changed at least a fair amount because of the coronavirus, while 75% of women in the US and 79% of women in Sweden said this.

Additionally, South Korea had the highest share of both women and men who said their life has been affected by coronavirus among the 14 nations at 85% and 79% respectively. Only 32% of women and 24% of men in Denmark said their life has changed as a result of the pandemic, the lowest share of respondents among both sexes from the nations polled.

The think tank notes that this may be because women make up a larger share of part-time workers in these nations, and many of those jobs are vulnerable to the effects of the pandemic as seen with a high unemployment rate relative to full-time workers and a large drop in part-time employment from March to April.

Similar to previous findings from a McKinsey & Company report, the Pew researchers found this difference may also be because women may have had to take on more child-rearing and household responsibilities during lockdowns.

The following chart highlights Pew Research Center's findings from the survey, broken out by sex: