Covid’s Unequal Impact

Why Would Covid-19 Exacerbate Gender Inequality?

The above results show the Covid-19 impact on researchers regardless of gender. Yet, there are reasons to suspect that the negative impact on female academics by the Covid-19 crisis is bigger because, on average, they engage in more caring and teaching tasks than men.

Supporting this idea, a diary study of the VUB among the general Flemish population showed that women spent on average 13 hours a week more performing care duties during the lockdown in the spring of 2020 than before. In contrast, men reported on average more leisure time than before and did not feel hindered in their work by the presence of their children. These figures suggest that in Flemish households care duties were mostly performed by mothers—something that is also reflected in the fact that 70% of the 265,000 parents who took ‘corona parental leave’ were indeed women.

We may expect that this lower involvement in research projects will eventually result in fewer publications by female authors in the foreseeable future. This is especially problematic since the lockdown period in the spring of 2020 was already characterized by a lower number of publication registrations and submissions by (especially junior) women than before.

Taken together, the Covid-19 crisis unequally impacted the research time of academics (m, f, x) such that those with high care duties or a heavy teaching load experienced a severely negative impact on their work. As these first studies show, the Covid-19 crisis has especially reduced the research time for (young) female academics, and consequently their time to apply for research funding and publishing results. This may exacerbate the already existing gender-inequalities in academia.

What Did the Young Academy Do?

To put this issue on the agenda of policy makers and to encourage them to take action to minimize the unequal impact of the Covid-19 crisis on academics at Flemish universities, the Young Academy (YA) taskforce Gender in Academia started to collect facts and figures as well as best practices in June 2020. The resulting memo was presented to the deans of all Flemish universities via the Vlaamse Interuniversitaire Raad (VLIR), and after the summer break, we organized a series of ‘advisory meetings’ in which each university’s dean and relevant policy makers engaged in a dialogue with an interdisciplinary interuniversity team of YA members to draft ideas and best practices for potential actions that would fit their particular university. By the end of October, we collected all universities’ individual action plans into a ‘synthesis document’ that was discussed at the VLIR board to further exchange best practices on reducing the negative Covid-19 impact. A similar exercise was done with the policy makers in charge at the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO).

What Can Universities and Policy Makers Do?

Although each university, and the FWO, developed their own tailor-made action plan, the Young Academy encouraged them to focus on at least five dimensions that, to some extent, correspond to important recommendations of the VLIR-JA Gender charter that all universities signed in June 2019 (see: wetenschapismvx.be).

Firstly, we encouraged them to consider extending the temporary contracts of young researchers who could clearly demonstrate a negative impact by Covid-19 due to either care or teaching duties, or who had to rethink or even pause their research projects due to the pandemic. By doing so, universities can guarantee equal future career opportunities for all young scholars.

Secondly, we advocated that all researchers across all career stages should have the opportunity to document the impact of the Covid-19 crisis on their work whenever they would apply for funding, positions, or promotions. Relatedly, we highlighted that selection and evaluation committees should be informed and trained in taking this information into account and in approaching applications in a rather holistic way instead of only looking at quantitative performance indicators that may be biased by the Covid-19 impact.

Thirdly, and embedded in a longer-term perspective, we encouraged all employers to facilitate academics in taking parental leave or other forms of care leave. This could be achieved by installing a ‘more workable work culture’ as well as guarantees that no leave would ever harm one’s career or the workings of one’s research group (e.g., by setting up a replacement pool for teaching duties, taking effective research time into account when evaluating academics, and so on).

Fourthly, we encouraged universities to better appreciate the teaching efforts and shifts to online education, so that research and teaching would become equally important in evaluating academics’ performance.

Finally, we urged all universities and the FWO to monitor the gender inequalities in academia even more closely than before in order to be able to add or change initiatives to counter the negative impact of Covid-19 whenever that would appear to be necessary.

What Can I Do?

Since all of the above-mentioned actions should be taken at the level of funding institutions and university policies, one may wonder to what extent individual academics can contribute to fighting the resulting inequalities of the Covid-19 crisis for themselves and their (junior) colleagues. We are convinced, however, that each one of us can make a difference by taking one of the following actions that increase awareness on this theme within our academic community. Specifically, we would like to encourage you to: