Is it true that men are less likely to follow the Covid rules because of Reasons About Masculinity or are they just more likely to be conservatives who support Trump? https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/10/us/politics/trump-biden-masks-masculinity.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

Pew finds a man/woman mask gap but it’s smaller than the white/black mask gap and both are much smaller than the simple Party ID gap.

Most parsimonious explanation seems to me that this is just about partisanship.

In the Vox version of this story @alex_abads says people follow signals from leaders when under stress — so Trump fans (mostly men) are listening to him be weird about masks.

https://www.vox.com/the-goods/21356150/american-men-wont-wear-masks-covid-19

Data for Progress finds

— a five-point gender gap when you control for partisanship and other demographic factors

— a fourteen point partisanship gap when you control for demographics

So independent impacts of gender and party, but party > gender. https://www.dataforprogress.org/blog/2020/6/21/the-emergent-partisan-gap-in-social-distancing