Review 1: "COVID-19 is Feminine: Grammatical Gender In�uences Future Danger Perceptions and Precautionary Behavior"

This article presents the results of a series of experiments conducted online via the Clickworker platform, which study the grammatical gender associations of the notions “coronavirus” and “Covid(-19)” in French (and other Romance languages) in relation to precautionary behavioral intentions and danger perceptions. My statistical skills allow me to evaluate quantitative results only superficially (but I have no reason to doubt their accuracy). In addition, the appendices showing which questions the participants were asked as well as other details were not available. This evaluation concerns the article alone and my judgement of the relevance of the experimental approaches


Review:
This article presents the results of a series of experiments conducted online via the Clickworker platform, which study the grammatical gender associations of the notions "coronavirus" and "Covid (-19)" in French (and other Romance languages) in relation to precautionary behavioral intentions and danger perceptions.
My statistical skills allow me to evaluate quantitative results only superficially (but I have no reason to doubt their accuracy). In addition, the appendices showing which questions the participants were asked as well as other details were not available. This evaluation concerns the article alone and my judgement of the relevance of the experimental approaches.
The first part of the title of the article ("COVID-19 is Feminine"), which at the same time serves as a premise for the article, is highly questionable. Covid does not have a fixed gender for the moment but seems to be used overwhelmingly with the male article, in European French (in contrast to the more diversified Canadian usage). It is not possible to determine what influence an institution such as the Académie française has on usage, but it would be totally wrong to think that its recommendations automatically translate into reality, where "le" covid seems to be used much more than "la" covid, in the European francophonie. (See the study by Mathieu Avanzi, which documents the uses during the first wave: https://theconversation.com/le-la-covidreouvrir-ou-rouvrir-les-lecons-de-grammaire-du-coronavirus-138633). In experimental research, it would be better to take into account actual use and not prescriptive recommendations.
Potentially informative. The main claims made are not strongly justified by the methods and data, but may yield some insight. The results and conclusions of the study may resemble those from the hypothetical ideal study, but there is substantial room for doubt. Decision-makers should consider this evidence only with a thorough understanding of its weaknesses, alongside other evidence and theory. Decisionmakers should not consider this actionable, unless the weaknesses are clearly understood and there is other theory and evidence to further support it.
Rapid Reviews COVID-19 Review 1: "COVID-19 is Feminine: Grammatical Gender In uences Future Danger Perceptions and Precautionary Behavior 3 The first experiment gives a statistically significant result, but it is also difficult to interpret: are the disparities explained by the difference between virus and covid or by the use of the feminine article for covid (which may be potentially perceived as strange)? The same applies to the second experiment, which concerns Spanish, where the use of gender also seems hesitant.
In both cases, an influence of grammatical gender cannot be excluded, but it is not possible to separate it from the lexicon used, which the authors are aware of ("experimental confounds: the two names differ in terms of phonetic qualities, they mean different things, and they may have different connotations").
Only the third experiment, where merely the article for covid is tested, can potentially attest a gender-related effect. However, if the observed differences can be attributed to grammatical gender, it is not known what factor(s) may play a role in the fact that the feminine gender is probably perceived as unusual by French-speaking Europeans.
The fourth study, which involves a comparison between Google searches for a "femininity score" and factors linked to the evolution of the pandemic, is difficult to interpret, if only for the reason that, if the Académie française's decision had a significant effect on usage, it concerns only part of the data observed (approximately the last third).
In short, while the experiments yield potentially interesting results ("Presumably, the grammatical gender mark activates stereotypical concepts related to masculinity and femininity"), the fact that the authors assume that covid is used with the feminine article -thus not taking into account the actual uses -makes it difficult, if not impossible, to judge the potential conclusions to be drawn, especially since the gender of words in a communication is only one factor likely to influence perception among others (e.g. length and wording of sentences, comprehensibility of the text, etc.).
Dans les deux cas, on ne peut pas exclure une influence du genre grammatical, mais il n'est pas possible de la départager du lexique utilisé, ce dont les auteur·e·s sont conscient·e·s (« experimental confounds: the two names differ in terms of phonetic qualities, they mean different things, and they may have different connotations »).