Gender Inequality in Research Productivity During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

We study the disproportionate impact of the lockdown as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak on female and male academics' research productivity in social science. We collect data from the largest open-access preprint repository for social science on 41,858 research preprints in 18 disciplines produced by 76,832 authors across 25 countries in a span of two years. We find that during the 10 weeks after the lockdown in the United States, although the total research productivity increased by 35%, female academics' productivity dropped by 13.9% relative to that of male academics. We also show that several disciplines drive such gender inequality. Finally, we find that this intensified productivity gap is more pronounced for academics in top-ranked universities, and the effect exists in six other countries.

“Set Your Soul on Fire”: A Feminist-Informed Co-Constructed Autoethnography of Sixteen Multidiscipline, Multicultural, and Multilingual Globally Located Academic Women Exploring Gendered Academic Productivity During COVID-19

“…Pinho-Gomes et al (2020) observed this results in a disproportionate impact, especially on early career researchers. Vincent-Lamarre et al (2020) and Cui et al (2021) found the effect to be particularly pronounced at top-ranked research institutions.…”

How COVID-19 has affected research productivity in Africa: lessons for the future

“…Schotte, Danquah, Osei, and Sen (2021) went as far as suggesting that the COVID-19 pandemic has the potential of accentuating existing inequalities. Studies have shown that the lockdown is entrenching traditional gendered inequalities (Arntz et al, 2020;Cui, Ding, & Zhu, 2020;King & Frederickson, 2021;Yildirim & Eslen-Ziya, 2021). In their study of the United States, Cui et al (2020) found that female academics' productivity dropped by 13.2 percent relative to that of male academics.…”

“…Studies have shown that the lockdown is entrenching traditional gendered inequalities (Arntz et al, 2020;Cui, Ding, & Zhu, 2020;King & Frederickson, 2021;Yildirim & Eslen-Ziya, 2021). In their study of the United States, Cui et al (2020) found that female academics' productivity dropped by 13.2 percent relative to that of male academics. Eaton (2020) suggests the pandemic has disproportionately affected the productivity of early-career researchers.…”

“…Yet, insights into how the pandemic has impacted the productivity of researchers are still sketchy in the broader literature. Furthermore, most of the existing studies focus has focused on researchers in western countries (see (Cui et al, 2020;Myers et al, 2020), leaving major gaps in our understanding of how Africa's centers of knowledge production, which are to some extent more vulnerable, are faring in this crisis. As such, there have been calls for more studies to focus on how the pandemic has affected the research sector in Africa (Mugo et al, 2021;van Schalkwyk, 2020).…”

Home sweet home: Working from home and employee performance during the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK

“…Etheridge et al (2020) find that, despite remaining constant during the pandemic, average WFH productivity declined for women Cui et al (2020). find that ten weeks after the lockdown in the United States, although the total research productivity (measured by published research preprints) increased by 35 percent, female academics' productivity dropped by 13.2 percent relative to that of male academics.7Rubin et al (2020) show that workplace restrictions and forced WFH saved commuting time, which lead to increased satisfaction among employees, especially among those who commuted by car.…”