The gender imbalance that has existed for years in astronomical research and publication has worsened when the COVID-19 pandemic closed labs and sent scientists home.
Before the pandemic, female astronomers averaged 9 papers for every 10 papers published by their male counterparts, a rate that has remained constant for decades. Following the closure of many universities and research centers in March 2020 to prevent the spread of COVID-19, the publication of astronomy papers increased by 13%, according to a new analysis. However, the number of papers written by male astronomers has increased even more, widening the gender gap in astronomical publications.
These are the conclusions of cosmologists Vanessa Böhm of the University of California at Berkeley and Jia Liu of the Kavli Institute for Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU) in Japan, who have been investigating the impact of the pandemic on the astronomical community around the world. with a special focus on young scientists and women scientists.
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The two scientists analyzed the number of publications on astronomy in the world before the pandemic until February 2022, two years after the start of the COVID-19 crisis. Of the 25 countries studied, 14 showed that women published a smaller proportion of articles in astronomy and fewer women researchers working in this field. (Because the study analyzed publications rather than interviewing scientists directly, the results reflect the perception of gender and gender as a binary, rather than a self-identified gender as a spectrum.)
The researchers partly attributed the 13% increase in astronomy papers overall to the closure, which allowed researchers to turn their attention to previously shelved projects and devote more time to paper writing.
But this increase in publications has been smaller among female authors than among males — even in countries like the Netherlands, Australia and Switzerland, where female astronomers were more prolific than male pre-COVID-19.
“I think what was interesting was that we saw that women did not equally share this increase in productivity,” Böhm said in a statement.
The widening gap between male and female productivity found by Liu and Böhm echoes findings from other studies that show that women have regressed in terms of workplace equity during the pandemic.
In their country analysis, the researchers noted a significant increase in the publication of new researchers in Asia, primarily in Japan, Taiwan and China. Elsewhere, fewer new astronomical studies were published during the pandemic for the first time. (The duo found that about a quarter of new authors in the field of astronomy were women, a percentage they said had remained constant over the previous decade.)
Looking only at papers by experienced astronomers, the duo found that the number of publications per researcher had increased from the pre-pandemic trend.
“The decrease in the number of first-time authors indicates that young researchers are unable to enter the field or complete their first projects,” Böhm said.
Why are female astronomers disproportionately affected by the pandemic?
The new study does not examine what caused the increase in gender inequality, but another study found that women have a disproportionate responsibility for caring for children and the elderly during a pandemic. For academics, this discrepancy has meant that women scientists have less time to record research results compared to men.
Liu herself was one of the female researchers affected by the sudden loss of child care when the pandemic began. As a research fellow at the Berkeley Center for Cosmological Physics, she found herself at home with a toddler while looking for an academic job. Eventually, she and her husband had to leave Berkeley to find affordable childcare. Liu joined Kavli IPMU in Tokyo as an Associate Project Professor in 2021.
“The pandemic has greatly affected my life as a young mother and aspiring scientist: I lost care for children, reduced productivity, lost touch with colleagues and a busy job market,” Liu said in a statement. “As I restructured my research and daily life, I couldn’t stop wondering, ‘How has the pandemic affected others in my field? Am I lonely?”
Co-author Liu Bem said that an additional factor in the gender disparity may be that young female astrophysicists struggling with “Imposter Syndrome” — the misconception that they may not be on the same level as colleagues — have received less mentorship during pandemic time.
“There are many barriers to young women’s confidence in this area that are holding them back,” she said in a statement.
The couple decided to start a research project to study the number of publications in the field of astronomy by gender and country over time, something that had not been done before.
Böhm and Liu studied published data from February 1950 to February of that year, downloading 1.2 million records from astronomical journals. Since self-identified gender is not included in these entries, the duo assigned a gender probability to each author based on their name and country, and the last based on the affiliation listed on the document.
“When we calculated the average number of articles written by each researcher, we saw an increase in individual productivity in most countries,” Liu said. “Meanwhile, in most of the countries we studied, there is a decrease in the number of new researchers.”
Liu added that the analysis points to greater barriers for new researchers to enter the field, as well as for young researchers trying to publish their very first paper during the pandemic.
The scientists also tested the other end of the career spectrum. Looking at researchers who have not published research in the field of astronomy in the past two years, Liu and Böhm also found that there is an 87% chance that they will no longer publish research in this field, with dropout rates also disproportionately affecting women.
Böhm herself will be one of the dropouts, as she decided she would apply her data analysis skills outside of academia when her postdoctoral fellowship ended. Now she’s set to help a startup that uses machine learning predictions to help the shipping industry reduce ocean fuel waste.
“This article was part of a change of interest that I had to go and use the skills I have acquired over the past couple of years to more mundane topics,” she said. “These days, I’m a little more driven by what will actually make a difference here on Earth.”
The team’s study is published Monday (November 28) in the journal Nature Astronomy.
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