A study of gender disparities towards COVID-19 vaccination drive in Maharashtra State, India

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: India officially launched the world's biggest COVID-19 vaccination drive on January 16, 2021, operating 3006 vaccination sites at the beginning. At present 21872 sites conducting vaccination as on August 24, 2021. The process of vaccination is not yet mandatory in India. Vaccination is conducted free of cost at 20242 Government sites and paid at 1630 private sites. This study involves Hypothesis Testing for analyzing the gender disparities towards COVID-19 vaccination. METHODS: For this study, we have used Maharashtra States district wise COVID-19 vaccination data. Using Hypothesis Testing method Pearson's Chi-square test for independence compares two variables gender disparities and vaccination in a contingency table to see if they are related. To test the Effect size of gender disparities is small, medium or large Cohen Cramer's rule is used. RESULTS: Our result shows that, just 84 women were vaccinated for every 100 men in Maharashtra State, India. This ratio is even lower than India's gender ratio i.e. 90:100. Men were more aware and ahead of women in COVID-19 Vaccination Drive. Effect size shows that size of gender disparities is small. CONCLUSION: As per the result it is seen that COVID-19 Vaccination awareness is slightly less amongst the women in Maharashtra, India. To improve this statistics of COVID-19 Vaccination, Authorities should start the awareness campaign amongst the citizen towards the importance of vaccination.