Unequal effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on scientists

Myers, Kyle; Tham, Wei Yang; Yin, Yian; Cohodes, Nina; Thursby, Jerry G.; Thursby, Marie C.; Schiffer, P.; Walsh, Joseph T.; Lakhani, Karim R.; Wang, Dashun

doi:10.1038/s41562-020-0921-y

Cited by 603 publications

(665 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…These policies allow eligible assistant professors to stop their tenure clock for one year. 4 Importantly, such policies are independent of leave-taking; meaning that assistant professors do not face a tradeoff between forgoing income while on leave and gaining the extra time on their tenure clock. 5 Tenure clock stopping policies typically cover having children in addition to serious illness or personal issues and caring for sick or elderly relatives.…”

Section: Tenure Clock Stopping Policiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This means that assistant professors are usually evaluated for tenure during year six. 4 Some universities independently provide course reductions to new parents, but because it is often at the discretion of the department chair (e.g., Mason et al 2005) it is not considered here. There is little evidence that the introduction of course reduction policies are correlated at the university level.…”

Section: Tenure Clock Stopping Policiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Equal but Inequitable: Who Benefits from Gender-Neutral Tenure Clock Stopping Policies?

Antecol

Bedard

Stearns

2018

American Economic Review

300

230

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Many skilled professional occupations are characterized by an early period of intensive skill accumulation and career establishment. Examples include law firm associates, surgical residents, and untenured faculty at research-intensive universities. High female exit rates are sometimes blamed on the inability of new mothers to survive the sustained negative productivity shock associated with childbearing and early childrearing in these environments. Gender-neutral family policies have been adopted in some professions in an attempt to “level the playing field.” The gender-neutral tenure clock stopping policies adopted by the majority of research-intensive universities in the United States in recent decades are an excellent example. But to date, there is no empirical evidence showing that these policies help women. Using a unique dataset on the universe of assistant professor hires at top-50 economics departments from 1980–2005, we show that the adoption of gender-neutral tenure clock stopping policies substantially reduced female tenure rates while substantially increasing male tenure rates. However, these policies do not reduce the probability that either men or women eventually earn tenure in the profession. (JEL I23, J16, J24, J32, J44)

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Section: Tenure Clock Stopping Policiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Tenure Clock Stopping Policiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Equal but Inequitable: Who Benefits from Gender-Neutral Tenure Clock Stopping Policies?

Antecol

Bedard

Stearns

2018

American Economic Review

300

230

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…36 Early studies seem to bear this out. 37 Anxiety about the consequences are, at least, being aired: 'Covid-19 is threatening progress by amplifying existing gender disparities' a letter in The Lancet recently argued. 38 Of course, while these gendered trends play out on a wider scale, individual families have negotiated different patterns, and some academic fathers have taken on the childcare burden.…”

Section: Covid-19 Parenting and Care Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Parenting during the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020: academia, labour and care work

Crook

2020

Women's History Review

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The Covid-19 pandemic instigated fundamental challenges and changes to parents' working lives in Britain. This viewpoint article reflects upon the experience of balancing childrearing responsibilities with academic work across the Spring and Summer of 2020. It positions the removal of formal and informal childcare networks within the history of feminist demands around childcare and sets it against the background of the recent history of women and reproduction within Higher Education in Britain. Drawing upon feminist literature, personal experience, academic parents' testimony and emerging studies of the gendered effects of the crisis, the article explores some of the critical challenges that balancing childcare and academic work presented and offers some preliminary reflections on the experience of the concurrent 'double shift' the lockdown engendered.

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“…However, in the aftermath of COVID-19, the academic and research community will also need to reckon with and repair the disparities that the pandemic has caused to the research workforce. COVID-19 has resulted in unique researcher productivity challenges for women, racial/ethnic minorities, and certain disciplines including human research (2). The challenges of K-12 schooling shifting online disproportionately affects women, given that they tend to take on more childcare and other domestic caregiving responsibilities (9).…”

Section: Risk Versus Benefitmentioning

confidence: 99%

A risk–benefit framework for human research during the COVID-19 pandemic

Lumeng

Chavous

Lok

et al. 2020

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has had a profound impact on the academic research enterprise. Over the span of just a few weeks in March 2020, most large U.S. research institutions closed the majority of their laboratories, studios, and offices, suspended travel and fieldwork, and paused the majority of human research, resulting in the halt of more than 80% of all on-site research activity (1). After months of limited operations, laboratory-and field-based research in the basic and natural sciences were among the first activities to resume. These activities presented relatively low risk for transmission with implementation of proper control measures such as face coverings, health screens, and social distancing. Performing human research during a global pandemic, however, raises new ethical and practical challenges on a scale never before seen. Across the clinical, social, and behavioral sciences, human research can require close contact between researchers and participants, over variable observational periods, and across a variety of locations (e.g., clinics, schools, prisons). Therefore, research with human participants has been slower to resume given the risks associated with potential direct and/or airborne transmission between and among researchers and participants. Indeed, early evidence suggests that research disciplines that rely on face-to-face human contact are among the disciplines that have seen the steepest drop in productivity during the pandemic (2), despite the fact that human research constitutes a significant fraction of the research enterprise. Not all human research paused as stay-at-home orders were implemented across the United States. Work continued on projects that could be performed remotely, as did critical clinical work to help understand and develop solutions for the ongoing pandemic. Some COVID-19 therapeutic trials with potential immediate, life-saving benefit began with numerous safety precautions (3, 4). Many clinical trials with potential immediate life-saving benefit for a range of conditions continued through the pandemic, Performing human research during a global pandemic raises new ethical and practical challenges on a scale never before seen. To safely and ethically restart more of the human research portfolio, institutions must develop guiding principles and an explicit plan for managing human research during the pandemic.

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Unequal effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on scientists

Cited by 603 publications

References 10 publications

Equal but Inequitable: Who Benefits from Gender-Neutral Tenure Clock Stopping Policies?

Equal but Inequitable: Who Benefits from Gender-Neutral Tenure Clock Stopping Policies?

Parenting during the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020: academia, labour and care work

A risk–benefit framework for human research during the COVID-19 pandemic

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