Empirical study of the COVID-19 social effects on gender and generations: scientific insights for future public policies

Abstract

Society management and the COVID-19 pandemic require continuous restatement and consolidation. Furthermore, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development created by the United Nations establishes a set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability to meet the needs of future generations and where Goal 5 addresses gender equality as a central priority. The main aim of this paper is to present a crossed-analysis study on how the health crisis has influenced differently the social behaviour between gender and generations in Spain. For this study there have been used a massive open data from the Sociological Research Centre (CIS). The mixed techniques´ methodology of this research was applied to study four social effect dimensions, such as “way of living”, “way of thinking”, “way of self-healthcare” and “social habits and behaviour”. The used techniques contributed analytically to gender and generations management during the pandemic with the intent of complementarity. Obtained findings by analysing four studied dimensions explain the effects and consequences of the pandemic involving differences between men and women, younger and older generations, leading to society management implications that can timely serve as a paradigm with scientific insights for public policies.

Keywords

• gender
• generations
• public policies
• covid-19
• k-means cluster analysis
• multiple correspondence analysis