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

Abstract

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.

Gender-specific effects of COVID-19 lockdowns on scientific publishing productivity: Impact and resilience

“…We found six of these, each assessing tens of thousands of articles. These studies agree that overall submissions increased in 2020 relative to 2019 ( Wehner et al, 2020 ; Viglione, 2020 ; Vincent-Lamarre et al, 2020 ; Muric et al, 2021 ; Ucar et al, 2022 ), with several reporting smaller increases in submissions by women than by men in various databases ( Viglione, 2020 ; Vincent-Lamarre et al, 2020 ; Muric et al, 2021 ; Ucar et al, 2022 ; King and Frederickson, 2021 ). Notably, Wehner showed a statistically significant increase over time in the gender gap between corresponding authors in medRxiv (from 23% in January 2020 to 55% in April 2020) but not in bioRxiv (from 46% in January 2020 to 47% in April 2020) ( Wehner et al, 2020 ) findings supported by ( King and Frederickson, 2021 ).…”

The role of women's reading groups

“…Women also assume the greater share of domestic and childcare tasks at home so scholarly reading and writing are unlikely to take place there either. Evidence suggests that women scholars were disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic (Guardian, 2020, Ucar et al, 2022 with their rates of submission of journal articles decreasing whilst those of men increased, largely due to women assuming even more domestic tasks than they did pre-COVID. The reading group gives women access to an achievable amount of scholarship (reading one text, twice each year) and the meetings take place during work hours meaning they are accessible for members regardless of domestic responsibilities.…”

Women in sustainability research: Examining gender authorship differences in peer-reviewed publications

“…In general, men tend to publish more scientific papers than women in most European countries (Ghiasi et al, 2015;Paul-Hus et al, 2015;Aksnes et al, 2019), except for countries with low scientific production, for example, in Eastern Europe (i.e., Macedonia, Latvia, Ukraine, and Bosnia and Herzegovina), where the rate of female authorships is higher than that of male authorships. This gender gap increased due to COVID-19 lockdowns, resulting in lower publications by female researchers (Ucar et al, 2022) and decreases in female research leadership (Bell and Fong, 2021).…”