Almost overnight, COVID-19
turned me into an elementary school teacher, a housekeeper, a hair dresser, and
a professional worrier – all things I am terrible at, with the exception of the
latter. My full-time job as an academic
economist has become an afterthought: I now jot down research ideas between
snack time and tantrums, read and write papers while I guiltily plug my kid
into yet another device, and conduct Zoom meetings that are sometimes crashed
by unexpected visitors.
As a full-time working
mom, I am not alone. Across the board,
the disproportionate burden of the disruption created by COVID-19 is being borne
by women, especially by those with young children and no other childcare
options (see for example, here
and here). The full effects of the pandemic on gender
gaps in the labor market – my area of research
focus – will take time to emerge. However, a quick look at
the differential impacts on the productivity of male and female academics can give
us a preview of the extent of the problem.
There are three reasons
why academics are a particularly interesting and informative group to consider.
First, professors and researchers are unlikely to have lost their jobs as a
result of COVID-19, so it is possible to estimate productivity effects that are
not confounded by changes in employment. Many can conduct research and teach
classes from home, at least in theory. Second, one way to measure academic
productivity is by the number of submissions to journals and working paper/pre-print
series. Academic researchers are expected to conduct and publish research, in
addition to teaching and service responsibilities. Finally, gender inequality
among academics is important because the demographic composition of faculty
shapes what is taught in the classroom, what research questions are asked, and
how policy discussions are framed.
The world of social media
is already abuzz with anecdotal evidence
in support of the hypothesis that female academics have been more negatively impacted
by the disruptions of COVID-19, while male academic productivity is on the rise
(just search Twitter for #coronapublicationgap).
Against all odds, I
partnered with two other female researchers, Tatyana Deryugina
and Jenna
Stearns, to quantify this widening gender gap in academic productivity.
In the short term, we are
using existing data to compare publication patterns of men and women before and
after COVID-19 via Academic
Sequitur, a website founded by Tatyana Deryugina, that tracks
new publications in more than 4,000 top-ranked journals and pre-publication
series across many STEM fields, including economics – a discipline with some of
the largest gender
gaps
in outcomes including entry into the profession, promotion rates, and salaries,
even prior to COVID-19. Because of publication lags in academia, gender effects
on final publications will not show up for some time. To assess the situation
quickly, we started by analyzing key pre-print/working paper series in
economics for the years 2018-2020: ArXiv Economics (1,537 papers), CEPR
Discussion Papers (2,095 papers), CESifo Working Papers (1,196 papers), HCEO
Working Papers (209 papers), IZA Discussion Papers (1,699 papers), and NBER Working
Papers (3,029 papers). We also included the AEA Randomized Control Trial (RCT)
Registry (1,959 projects registered) as an additional indicator of
productivity. We used authors’ first names to proxy for their gender.
Here is what we found. The
overall number of new working paper submissions looks pretty unremarkable overall
(see graph below). The spike in the spring and summer of 2018 is driven by
ArXiv Economics and, to a lesser extent, CESifo working papers, and the March
2020 spike is driven by IZA Discussion Papers, which hit a new record. So productivity
overall appears to be holding stable.
However, after accounting
for seasonality and general year-to-year changes, submissions by female authors
fell by over 3 percentage points (pp) in March of 2020, and further fell by 5 pp
in April. This might seem small, but
considering that women represent only about 25 percent of authors in our
sample, these numbers actually imply approximately a 12+ percent drop in March
and a 20+ percent drop in April, relative to the mean. Because these working
papers are likely to have been in the works for some time, the adverse
productivity effects may be even larger in May.
The decline in female
authorship over these past two months is particularly apparent in submissions
to the NBER Working Paper Series (a 9 pp drop in March and a 38 pp drop in
April), although we also see large drops in female authorship among CEPR
Discussion Papers and HCEO Working Papers.
Papers posted to these highly regarded series are often submitted to and
published in top journals.
These results likely mask
substantial heterogeneity. Importantly, not
all women are equally constrained by the COVID-19 countermeasures. Some have access to additional childcare or
have no dependents. These considerations
mean that the overall detrimental effect on women we report is likely an underestimate
for mothers. At the same time, some men are primary or co-equal caregivers to
their children and face similar productivity challenges during the pandemic. But
on average, male faculty are 4 times more likely to have a stay-at-home partner
than female faculty (20
vs. 5 percent), and female faculty with children spend considerably
more time engaging in caregiving activities compared to their
male counterparts (35.5 vs. 20.3 hours per week). Furthermore, differences in
impact could stem from one’s country of residence. Although researchers across
the globe are subject to stay-at-home orders, cultural gender norms and
differences in childcare and leave policies may affect the gender gap in
productivity. To address these questions, we are currently designing a survey
to produce more nuanced data on academics’ circumstances.
Our first pass at
quantifying the effects of COVID-19 on gender gaps in academia leads to important
policy implications. For example, many academic institutions are currently
offering widespread tenure
clock extensions due to COVID-19 available to both male
and female faculty regardless of their circumstances. Jenna Stearns and her
co-authors have
shown that similarly broad parental leave policies can lead
to unintended consequences, including an increase in the gender gap. Our preliminary estimates suggest that
COVID-19 related policies need to be carefully designed to avoid exacerbating gender
inequality.
You might ask, if female
academics are becoming less productive, how did the three of us even manage to
write this blog post? The secret is that Tatyana Deryugina has an au pair and
her mother-in-law living with her, and Jenna Stearns does not have children. As
for me, I have only one child who asked me yesterday “Mommy, is this a dream?”
and proceeded to answer his own question: “I know it’s not a dream because I
have TV.”