The far‐reaching, negative effects of the COVID‐19 pandemic have impacted healthcare, economic, public safety, and social systems globally. The public safety measures put in place in the United States during the COVID‐19 pandemic, including sheltering in places orders and shutdowns of schools and places of work, negatively impacted the employment status and increased time spent in domestic work and childcare for women. In this paper, we review and analyze the impacts, both direct and indirect, of COVID‐related policies on the lives of women. Specifically, we outline how the progression of policies aimed at addressing both public safety and economic recovery during the COVID‐19 pandemic affected women's health, paid and unpaid work, and wellbeing. We will focus on the impacts of policies implemented in the United States in comparison to policies that were implemented globally to address similar issues during the first two years of the COVID‐19 pandemic. Finally, we conclude with recommendations for policies that could prevent similar disparate impacts on women in future crises.

The political debate preceding passage of the Affordable Care Act included controversy over a bill that some claimed would establish a “death panel” to judge if older adults were worthy of receiving medical care. This claim was false, as the bill would instead incentivize physicians to inform Medicare patients about advanced directives: legal documentation of one’s end-of-life preferences. However, the death panel myth led to the removal of this bill from the Affordable Care Act, and a poll five years later found 41% of Americans still believed in the death panel myth. We investigated the effects believing in this myth had on older adults, hypothesizing that those who believed in the myth would have lower advance directive completion rates and more negative attitudes towards advanced directives. Community-dwelling older adults aged 65 to 102 years (N = 182) in a large city in the southern United States completed an interview survey. No relationship was found between belief in the death panel myth and advanced directive completion; however, older adults who believed in the myth had lower perceived need for advanced directives than those who did not. Surprisingly, 47.1% of older adults who believed in the myth also supported incentivizing doctors to inform patients about advanced directives, suggesting that many older adults who believe in the myth do not know that the controversial bill was about advanced directives. Results suggest that the death panel myth may have long-lasting effects, specifically persistent distrust about policies promoting advance directives.