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.
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•A large portion of the gender gap in the life sciences emerges between the post-doctoral and associate professor levels.•Women transition to principal investigator at about a 20% ...lower rate than men.•Gender differences in publication records can explain about 60% of this lower rate.•The remaining differential stems from women receiving less credit for their citations.
We examined the extent to which and why early career transitions have led to women being underrepresented among faculty in the life sciences. We followed the careers of 6,336 scientists from the post-doctoral fellowship stage to becoming a principal investigator (PI) – a critical transition in the academic life sciences. Using a unique dataset that connects individuals’ National Institutes of Health funding histories to their publication records, we found that a large portion of the overall gender gap in the life sciences emerges at this transition. Women become PIs at a 20% lower rate than men. Differences in “productivity” (publication records) can explain about 60% of this differential. The remaining portion appears to stem from gender differences in the returns to similar publication records, with women receiving less credit for their citations.
We present real time survey evidence from the UK, US and Germany showing that the immediate labor market impacts of Covid-19 differ considerably across countries. Employees in Germany, which has a ...well-established short-time work scheme, are substantially less likely to be affected by the crisis. Within countries, the impacts are highly unequal and exacerbate existing inequalities. Workers in alternative work arrangements and who can only do a small share of tasks from home are more likely to have lost their jobs and suffered falls in earnings. Women and less educated workers are more affected by the crisis.
•Employees in Germany have been less affected by the crisis than in the US and UK.•Being able to do work tasks from home sheltered from job and earnings losses.•Employees with temporary contracts have been more likely to lose their jobs.•Women and less educated workers are more affected by the crisis.•Women have taken on more childcare than men even when working from home.
Gender is one of the most pervasive and insidious forms of inequality. For example, English-language Wikipedia contains more than 1.5 million biographies about notable writers, inventors, and ...academics, but less than 19% of these biographies are about women. To try and improve these statistics, activists host “edit-a-thons” to increase the visibility of notable women. While this strategy helps create several biographies previously inexistent, it fails to address a more inconspicuous form of gender exclusion. Drawing on ethnographic observations, interviews, and quantitative analysis of web-scraped metadata, this article demonstrates that biographies about women who meet Wikipedia’s criteria for inclusion are more frequently considered non-notable and nominated for deletion compared to men’s biographies. This disproportionate rate is another dimension of gender inequality previously unexplored by social scientists and provides broader insights into how women’s achievements are (under)valued.
•This study investigates the gender gap and gender gaps across generations in digital literacy in Indonesia.•Men have higher levels of digital literacy than women.•Older generations are more likely ...to have lower levels of digital literacy.•Gender gap in digital literacy is more pronounced among older people.•Most of the gender gaps are attributed to gender differences in the distribution of observed characteristics.
This study investigates the digital literacy (DL) of men and women using a unique dataset of 6695 adults collected in Indonesia, the fourth largest country in the world. We analyze differences in men's and women's access to mobile phones, education, occupation, and income to explain DL gaps. We find that men have a higher level of DL than women and that the gap is more pronounced among older groups. We also find that most of the gap is due to differences in endowments, implying that reducing inequalities in access to mobile phones, education, occupation, and income can narrow the gaps.
Although Argentina harbours a notable increase in the academic community, achieving the highest number of researchers per capita in Latin America, the gender gap is still evident. The objective was ...to identify and evaluate the evolution of the main research themes in Argentinian ecology during the last 20 years to address whether social gender stereotypes were reproduced in research theme selection. We analysed four books of s from the Argentinian Ecology conferences of the last 20 years and identified gender of the first author and co‐authors. Natural Language Processing approach was used to analyse gender associations with the 16 319 words appearing in the 2208 titles of s. The average number of female co‐authors was always larger in female‐led s although the proportion of female co‐authors/total authors increased the most in male‐led s. Research themes evolved from those considered cornerstones of ecology (e.g. population‐oriented studies) to contemporary themes defined by Management and policy studies. Gender differences were present and changed with time. Currently, men work on research themes related to decision‐making, while women focus on environmental processes therefore it is urgent to create more leadership spaces for women to reduce gender inequalities.
We aimed to assess whether there is an association between the proportion of female editors-in-chief and members of editorial boards in infectious disease (ID) and microbiology journals.
Our ...cross-sectional observational study included ID or microbiology journals according to the 2019 Clarivate Journal Citation Reports. Journals' Q ranking, open-access status, and number and gender of editors-in-chief and editorial board members were collected from the journals' official websites. We conducted a binary gender assignment for each editor using names, pictures, and other online descriptors. Journals with over 100 editorial board members and those with over 25% of board members for whom we could not determine gender were excluded. Editorial teams with >50% women were considered women dominant. Univariate and multivariable analyses for female editor dominance were performed.
Overall, 167 journals were included, with total 6057 editorial members, 1655 (27.3%) of whom were women. Of 214 editors-in-chief, 48 (22%) were women, and only 25% (40 of 162) of journals had female editor-in-chief dominance. Factors associated with female dominance in the editor-in-chief role in univariate analysis were higher quartile rank, higher impact factor, and open access. Open-access journals remined significant in multivariable analysis (odds ratio (OR) 2.521; 95% CI, 1.140–5.576, p = 0.022). Larger editorial boards were less likely to have female dominance. Female editor-in-chief dominance was significantly associated with women-dominant editorial boards.
ID and microbiology journals have significantly few women as editors-in-chief and editorial board members. Understanding the reasons for this inequality is required as an important step to confront and resolve it.
Rarely has the transition from one year to the next been so eagerly anticipated as when we said goodbye (and good riddance!) to 2020 and ushered in 2021. We all would like a return to our “old” lives ...as they were in 2019. The launch of global vaccination programs against the SARS-CoV-2 virus makes the light at the end of the tunnel clearly visible.
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