“You Are Responsible for Your Own Safety”: An Intersectional Analysis of Mask-Wearing During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the US has been heavily criticized for its reliance on people’s voluntary uptake of health protective behaviors like mask-wearing. Such voluntary approaches to public health crises assume individuals are altruistic and will put the good of the community before themselves. However, social groups operate in distinct ways and have different motivations. Since ideas of individualism in the US are both gendered and racialized, we adopt an intersectional approach to examine how both race and gender interact to shape mask-wearing behaviors. Using a survey of 1,269 adults in the US, we find that white women are less likely to wear a mask than Latinas and Black women but observe no differences amongst men. Our data suggest that these differences arise because white women are more likely to approach mask-wearing as a personal choice, whereas Latinas and Black women are more likely to take a collectivist approach and view mask-wearing as a social responsibility. We highlight the importance of adopting an intersectional approach to understand true variability in health protective behaviors. We also draw attention to the importance of developing community-specific public health messaging that resonates with its members’ norms and experiences.