In general, the pandemic had more negative social consequences for women (e.g., lower income, more unpaid work, and burdensome care responsibilities) than for men. “Gender inequality is also a persistent problem within the walls of the university,” according to researchers Jochem Tolsma and Bas Hofstra. “That is why we expected to see a greater decline in scientific output among women in Dutch science than among men during the pandemic. But that turned out not to be the case.”
Fewer scientific publications
The researchers analyzed the publication data of more than 8,000 scientists from all disciplines at all Dutch universities for the period from 1990 to 2022. This showed that scientists published about a third less in the COVID-19 years 2020 and 2021 than outside the pandemic. This amounts to about 1.3 fewer papers per person per year. Dutch science was therefore hit hard. All in all, Dutch science ‘lost’ around 20,000 publications during the pandemic.
The researchers also demonstrated that scientists with childcare responsibilities were particularly unable to maintain their publication output. Scientists with a migrant background were also more severely affected.
Publication gap
Contrary to expectations, it turned out that female scientists' productivity did not decline more sharply than that of men during COVID. Some output, especially that related to mentoring roles, actually declined less for women than for men. “This is probably because the number of senior author positions declined more sharply for men than for women during COVID,” Tolsma and Hofstra say. “And given that senior author positions often go hand in hand with mentoring, it seems that men were more likely to drop mentoring tasks than women.” However, he emphasizes that the publication gap between female and male scientists is persistent (women publish about 12% less than men), although it did not widen during the COVID pandemic.