COVID-19, Academic Caretakers, and Mental Health

The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly affected research productivity in academia. Yet, as more and more studies have been conducted, it has been clear that it has not affected everyone equally. In particular, COVID -19 has exacerbated existing inequalities in academia. For example, there has always been a gender inequality in academia with women publishing, getting paid, and promoted less than men. In addition, women often shoulder most caretaking responsibilities in the household, which puts more strain on them in their jobs. During the quarantine period of the pandemic, nearly all childcare services were unavailable, causing academic parents to juggle full-time caretaking in addition to their full-time job. Numerous studies have shown that COVID-19 and quarantine left women and caretakers in academia with more responsibilities and less relief, affecting not only their research productivity and university jobs, but also their mental health. In a research study about academic caretakers at the University of Dayton in which 19 faculty from various departments were interviewed, almost all respondents mentioned the negative effects COVID-19 had on their mental health. Common themes included feeling stretched thin between work, childcare, and other duties and feeling burnout and unmotivated. Many respondents cited the stress of being a full-time caretaker and employee, the lack of in-person support, and anxiety about the future as central causes of their mental health decline. However, despite mental health struggles being an issue for all respondents, many said that being in various communities that supported each other were a huge help to them during this time.https://ecommons.udayton.edu/stander_posters/4209/thumbnail.jp

Has Covid-19 increased gender inequalities in professional advancement? Cross-country evidence on productivity differences between male and female software developers

Objective: This article analyzed gender differences in professional advancement following the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic based on data from open-source software developers in 37 countries. Background: Men and women may have been affected differently from the social distancing measures implemented to contain the Covid-19 pandemic. Given that men and women tend to work in different jobs and that they have been unequally involved in childcare duties, school and workplace closings may have impacted men’s and women’s professional lives unequally. Method: We analyzed original data from the world’s largest social coding community, GitHub. We first estimated a Holt-Winters forecast model to compare the predicted and the observed average weekly productivity of a random sample of male and female developers (N=177,480) during the first lockdown period in 2020. To explain the cross-country variation in the gendered effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on software developers’ productivity, we estimated two-way fixed effects models with different lockdown measures as predictors – school and workplace closures, in particular. Results: In most countries, both male and female developers were, on average, more productive than predicted, and productivity increased for both genders with increasing lockdown stringency. When examining the effects of the most relevant types of lockdown measures separately, we found that stay-at-home restrictions increased both men’s and women’s productivity and that workplace closures also increased the number of weekly contributions on average – but for women, only when schools were open. Conclusion: Having found gender differences in the effect of workplace closures contingent on school and daycare closures within a population that is relatively young and unlikely to have children (software developers), we conclude that the Covid-19 pandemic may indeed have contributed to increased gender inequalities in professional advancement.Fragestellung: In diesem Artikel untersuchen wir anhand von Open Source-Softwareentwicklern Produktivitätsunterschiede zwischen Männern und Frauen in Folge der Covid-19-Pandemie für insgesamt 37 Länder. Hintergrund: Die Maßnahmen, die zur Eindämmung der Covid-19 Pandemie getroffen wurden, hatten möglicherweise unterschiedliche Auswirkungen auf das berufliche Fortkommen von Männern und Frauen. Wie haben sich insbesondere die Schließungen von Arbeitsstätten, Schulen und Kitas ausgewirkt? Methode: Grundlage der Analysen sind Daten der weltweit größten Social Coding Community GitHub. In einem ersten Schritt schätzen wir Holt-Winters-Vorhersagemodelle, um die tatsächliche Produktivität mit der vorhergesagten Produktivität von männlichen und weiblichen Softwareentwicklern während des ersten Lockdowns im Jahr 2020 zu vergleichen (N=177.480). In einem zweiten Schritt schätzen wir two-way fixed-effects Modelle, um Unterschiede in den geschlechtsspezifischen Auswirkungen der Covid-19-Pandemie auf die Produktivität von Softwareentwicklern anhand verschiedener Lockdownmaßnahmen zu erklären, insbesondere der Schließung von Schulen und Arbeitsstätten. Ergebnisse: In den meisten Ländern waren sowohl männliche als auch weibliche Entwickler im Durchschnitt produktiver als erwartet. Diese Produktivitätszuwächse stiegen bei beiden Geschlechtern mit zunehmender Lockdownintensität. Eine getrennte Betrachtung der verschiedenen Maßnahmen zeigt, dass Ausgangssperren mit einer höheren Produktivität bei Männern und Frauen einhergingen. Gleiches gilt für die Schließung von Arbeitsstätten – bei Frauen jedoch nur dann, wenn die Schulen gleichzeitig geöffnet waren. Schlussfolgerung: Angesichts der Tatsache, dass unsere Untersuchungspopulation relativ jung und in der Tendenz kinderlos ist, wir aber dennoch in Abhängigkeit von Schul- und Kitaschließungen geschlechtsspezifische Unterschiede in den Auswirkungen geschlossener Arbeitsstätten finden, kommen wir zu dem Schluss, dass die Covid-19-Pandemie in der Tat zu größeren Ungleichheiten zwischen den Geschlechtern beim beruflichen Aufstieg beigetragen haben könnte

The effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the gender gap in research productivity within academia

Using measures of research productivity to assess academic performance puts women at a disadvantage because gender roles and unconscious biases, operating both at home and in academia, can affect research productivity. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on research productivity has been the subject of a number of studies, including studies based on surveys and studies based on numbers of articles submitted to and/or published in journals. Here, we combine the results of 55 studies that compared the impact of the pandemic on the research productivity of men and women; 17 of the studies were based on surveys, 38 were based on article counts, and the total number of effect sizes was 130. We find that the gender gap in research productivity increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the largest changes occurring in the social sciences and medicine, and the changes in the biological sciences and TEMCP (technology, engineering, mathematics, chemistry and physics) being much smaller.publishedVersio

Gender, race and parenthood impact academic productivity during the COVID-19 pandemic : from survey to action

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is altering dynamics in academia, and people juggling remote work and domestic demands – including childcare – have felt impacts on their productivity. Female authors have faced a decrease in paper submission rates since the beginning of the pandemic period. The reasons for this decline in women’s productivity need to be further investigated. Here, we analyzed the influence of gender, parenthood and race on academic productivity during the pandemic period based on a survey answered by 3,345 Brazilian academics from various knowledge areas and research institutions. Productivity was assessed by the ability to submit papers as planned and to meet deadlines during the initial period of social isolation in Brazil. The findings revealed that male academics – especially those without children – are the least affected group, whereas Black women and mothers are the most impacted groups. These impacts are likely a consequence of the well-known unequal division of domestic labor between men and women, which has been exacerbated during the pandemic. Additionally, our results highlight that racism strongly persists in academia, especially against Black women. The pandemic will have long-term effects on the career progression of the most affected groups. The results presented here are crucial for the development of actions and policies that aim to avoid further deepening the gender gap in academia

Virtual Meetings during the Pandemic: Boon or Bane for Gender Inequality

Prior research has revealed gender inequalities in (pre-pandemic) face-to-face meetings in terms of the inclusivity of meeting participant composition and the difficulty of participants to speak up during meetings. Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, the majority of meetings have been held virtually. The virtual nature of meetings offers flexibility in terms of including participants and it neutralizes some physical cues related to power dynamics. However, gender inequalities have also been identified related to the lockdown and work-from-home measures. Therefore, we set out to explore how the sudden switch to virtual meetings impacted gender inequalities in workplace meetings, in terms of the number of meetings participated in and difficulty to speak up, while controlling for hierarchical rank. Based on survey responses of 542 academic researchers, our exploratory findings indicate that virtual meetings mirror organizational gender inequalities and that these inequalities have exacerbated since the pandemic

Mind the gender gap: COVID-19 lockdown effects on gender differences in preprint submissions

The gender gap is a well-known problem in academia and, despite its gradual narrowing, recent estimations indicate that it will persist for decades. Short-term descriptive studies suggest that this gap may have actually worsened during the months of confinement following the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. In this work, we evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 lockdown on female and male academics' research productivity using preprint drop-off data. We examine a total of 307,902 unique research articles deposited in 5 major preprint repositories during the period between January and May each year from 2017 to 2020. We find that the proportion of female authors in online repositories steadily increased over time; however, the trend reversed during the confinement and gender parity worsened in two respects. First, the proportion of male authors in preprints increased significantly during lockdown. Second, the proportion of male authors in COVID-19-related articles was significantly higher than that of women. Overall, our results imply that the gender gap in academia suffered an approximately 1-year setback during the strict lockdown months of 2020, and COVID-related research areas suffered an additional 1.5-year setback.This work has been supported by the Madrid Government (Comunidad de Madrid) under the Multiannual Agreement with UC3M in the line of "Fostering Young Doctors Research" (CONCIERGE-CM-UC3M), and in the context of the V PRICIT (Regional Programme of Research and Technological Innovation. M.T. and I.U. also acknowledge support from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation through the research grant RTI2018-098182-A-I00

Career, Covid-19, and Care: (Gendered) Impacts of the Pandemic on the Work of Communication Scholars

The study at hand analyzes the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and related restrictions on scholars in the area of media and communication studies. It aims to highlight inequalities in the negative effects of the pandemic on academic output by examining the working conditions of scholars, taking into account gender, parenthood, and the partnership-based division of professional and care work. The quantitative survey was directed at communication scholars in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. The findings show that there are no significant gender differences in terms of changes in academic output during the first 15 months of the pandemic; instead, disadvantages were observed in terms of parenting, regardless of the gender of the parents. Gender-specific effects could be detected concerning family situations and partnerships. Here, male participants are more often found in relationships in which the partner only works half-time, than women who mostly live with a partner who works full-time. The data suggest that gender differences related to changes in the time allotted for professional and care work and academic output are leveled out by the characteristics of the academic career model in which German-speaking scholars work. Nevertheless, gendered structures in academia and partnerships shape how the impact of the pandemic on professional work is experienced