Abstract
AimWe conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to analyse gender differences in COVID-19 vaccination intentions.Subject and methodsPubMed, Web of Science and PsycInfo were searched (November 2020 to January 2021) for studies reporting absolute frequencies of COVID-19 vaccination intentions by gender. Averaged odds ratios comparing vaccination intentions among men and women were computed. Descriptive analyses of the studies were reported.ResultsSixty studies were included in the review and data from 46 studies (n = 141,550) were available for meta-analysis. A majority (58%) of papers reported men to have higher intentions to get vaccinated against COVID-19. Meta-analytic calculations showed that significantly fewer women stated that they would get vaccinated than men, OR 1.41 (95% CI 1.28 to 1.55). This effect was evident in several countries, and the difference was bigger in samples of health care workers than in unspecified general population samples.ConclusionThis systematic review and meta-analysis found lower vaccination intentions among women than men. This difference is discussed in the light of recent data on actual vaccination rates in different countries.
Highlights
The COVID-19 pandemic is among the greatest challenges of today’s time
In our systematic review we investigated gender differences in COVID-19 vaccination intentions
In our meta-analysis of averaged odds ratios across all the studies that provided us with the necessary frequency data (n = 46) we found an overall significant gender difference with males being on average 41% more likely to report that they intended to receive a vaccine compared with women
Summary
As of mid October 2021, more than 236 million people have already been infected with SARS-CoV-2 with 4.8 million deaths worldwide (WHO 2021). Several vaccines have been approved (Zimmer et al 2021) and after initial supply shortfalls, vaccination rates accelerated as of spring 2021. In high-income countries, vaccination rates with at least one dose varied between 60% and 80% by mid-October 2021 (Ritchie et al 2021). In developing countries where supply with vaccines is scarce, vaccination rates are much lower, for example 52% in India and under 10% in most parts of Africa (Ritchie et al 2021). It has been estimated that considering dominating vaccines, vaccination rates of 85–95% are necessary to protect from a severe increase of infections (Weber et al 2021)
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