Home restrictions increased the number of scientific health publications. With the advent of telecommuting, the number of investigations increased in all areas, but this increase occurred mainly among male researchers, being less than half of the posts created by women.
As the study points out “Covid-19 and Gender Differences in Family Medicine Scholarship”, the pandemic produced more professional interruptions among women, who also dedicated more hours to remote work, increasing their levels of stress, exhaustion and anxiety.
Specifically, as highlighted Katherine Wright, director of research in the department of Family and Community Medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, during the lockdown “Men were able to submit more studies, benefiting in turn from more appointments, promotions, funding and career opportunities as women fall behind.”
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During confinement only 41.5 percent of the investigations were carried out by women |
A) Yes, men would have up to 122 percent more inquiries during the pandemic. Although during the same months women would have also increased their scientific production, this was lower, placing the increase at 101 percent.
To reach this conclusion, research led by Wright looked at submissions to scientific journals during the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic, which showed that only 41.5 percent of the investigations were carried out by women, thus marking “a growing gender gap in the field of medical research”.
Among the reasons that would have led to this situation are the greater time spent caring for the family, as well as the stress generated by the greater workload. For this reason, the research indicates the possibility that the academic centers of medicine reassess promotion considerations, taking into account the specific needs of women during the pandemic, as well as conciliation policies and the challenges that researchers have had to face in confinement.
Repercussions of the lack of women researchers
Wright’s study warns that the gap is “worrying” and can have long-term repercussions for women in the field of medicine, due to the importance of these studies in ascent systems.
In this sense, the director of the Department of Family and Community Medicine stresses that “publications continue to be the hallmark of tenure and promotion decisions, so we want to make sure that women are not at risk of being left behind.”
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