Gender differences in institutional trust and covid-19 vaccines uptake in Ghana

One of the most studied social phenomena since the emergence of the covid-19 pandemic is trust. This renewed interest demonstrates the crucial role of trust in crises management. Unfortunately, most of the studies on trust have been conducted without considerations to saliant social categorisations like gender that might matter on how trust is built and radiated. This is despite differing socialisations of gender values in social contexts and how that might translate into how trust is built and demonstrated. The goal of this study, therefore, was to examine prevailing gendered patterns of institutional trust and how that might translate into the uptake of covid-19 vaccines in Ghana. We conducted logistic regression analyses on a sample of 1692 individual responses from a cross-sectional survey that was collected between October and November 2022 across four cities in Ghana. Results show that women were more trusting and were consequently more likely to take the vaccine in comparison to men. Interaction analysis further revealed that even when both men and women trusted a lot in relevant institutions like health, women were about 64% more likely to take the vaccine in comparison to men. Only men were significantly less likely to take the vaccine if they had trust concerns with political institutions. But both men and women were less likely to take the vaccine if they had trust concerns with health institutions. This study underscores the need for gender-specific policy programmes on public health issues.