The pandemic penalty on female researchers in veterinary pathology

The pandemic has significantly changed the way people think, work, and live. We have been asked to manage our stress, cope with uncertain and continuously evolving situations, be resilient, and move forward. Female researchers especially have had to substantially increase multitasking. Lockdowns, alternative at-home teaching arrangements, closure of schools and child care centers, closure of laboratories, increased domestic labor and household responsibilities, and increased online teaching workload have all played their part in creating a need for multitasking. With these increased demands on time, it is understandable that research would suffer. The research productivity is a combination of available time for research and research efficiency. With increased carer’s commitments and home-related tasks, time for doing research has been neglected. How could female researcher have a quiet, uninterrupted environment at home to keep up with their research efficiency? We all know the never-ending issue of gender inequality in the academic space (eg, career transitions, funding and salary gap, and representation in higher positions and leadership) and the pandemic has exacerbated this gap, in particular affecting productivity.

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a critical need to measure the productivity loss of female researchers. To begin with, we analyzed the number of papers with female first authorship and female last authorship published in Veterinary Pathology from 2018 to 2021 (source: Web of Science; access date: 7 January 2022; Fig. 1). We found a positive trend in the percentage of published papers led by a female researcher from 2018 to 2019, with 50/108 (46.3%) to 87/137 (63.5%) of papers with females as first authors. This was followed by a slow decline with 52/91 (57%) of papers in 2020 and 57/132 (43.2%) in 2021. Conversely, the number of papers with a male researcher as a first author increased from 50/137 (36.5%) in 2019 to 39/91 (43%) in 2020 and then plateaued in 2021 (53/132, 40.1%). In addition, there has been a significant deterioration in the percentage of female researchers that were last author on papers published during the pandemic (Fig. 2). The percentage of last authorships (excluding papers with single authors) was as follows: 40/96 of papers with female last authorship (42%) versus 56/96 of papers with male last authorship (58%) in 2019, 56/128 (43.7%) versus 72/128 (56.2%) in 2019, 35/89 (39%) versus 54/89 (61%) in 2020, and 47/121 (38.8%) versus 74/121 (61.2%) in 2021.

Figures 1 and 2.

Authorship of papers published in Veterinary Pathology from 2018 to 2021 (Source: Web of Science; access date: 7 January 2022). Figure 1. Total number of papers with female and male first authorship. Figure 2. Total number of papers with female and male last authorship.

While these results are not shocking and should not surprise anyone, the future impact could be significant. The future of female academics in junior positions, on tenure-track, or on the path of career progression could be especially difficult when faced with these barriers. We need to ensure that women’s career trajectories are safeguarded, preventing the pandemic from worsening existing inequalities in research. For example, measures should be implemented to support researchers most affected by this disruption, starting with fair evaluation of female research productivity during the pandemic period by promotion and tenure committees, and designing ad hoc policies relative to opportunity for performance evaluation. This is only a starting point to mitigate pandemic impact and allow more women to be “kept in” not “pushed out” of science.