Son Ji-Young, Bell Michelle L
School of the Environment, Yale University, New Haven, CT USA.
Humanit Soc Sci Commun. 2022;9(1):348. doi: 10.1057/s41599-022-01365-4. Epub 2022 Oct 4.
Many fields of science are still dominated by men. COVID-19 has dramatically changed the nature of work, including for scientists, such as lack of access to key resources and transition to online teaching. Further, scientists face the pandemic-related stressors common to other professions (e.g., childcare, eldercare). As many of these activities fall more heavily on women, the pandemic may have exacerbated gender disparities in science. We analyzed self-identified gender of corresponding author for 119,592 manuscripts from 151 countries submitted January 2019 to July 2021 to the Institute of Physics (IOP) portfolio of 57 academic journals, with disciplines of astronomy and astrophysics, bioscience, environmental science, materials, mathematics, physics, and interdisciplinary research. We consider differences by country, journal, and pre-pandemic versus pandemic periods. Gender was self-identified by corresponding author for 82.9% of manuscripts ( = 99,114 for subset of submissions with gender). Of these manuscripts, authors were 82.1% male, 17.8% female, and 0.08% non-binary. Most authors were male for all countries (country-specific values: range 0.0-100.0%, median 86.1%) and every journal (journal-specific values range 63.7-91.5%, median 83.7%). The contribution of female authors was slightly higher in the pandemic (18.7%) compared to pre-pandemic (16.5%). However, prior to the pandemic, the percent of submissions from women had been increasing, and this value slowed during the pandemic. Contrary to our hypothesis, we did not find that manuscript submissions from women decreased during the pandemic, although the rate of increased submissions evident prior to the pandemic slowed. In both pre-pandemic and pandemic periods, authorship was overwhelmingly male for all journals, countries, and fields. Further research is needed on impacts of the pandemic on other measures of scientific productivity (e.g., accepted manuscripts, teaching), scientific position (e.g., junior vs. senior scholars), as well as the underlying gender imbalance that persisted before and during the pandemic.
许多科学领域仍然由男性主导。新冠疫情极大地改变了工作性质，包括科学家的工作，例如难以获取关键资源以及向在线教学的转变。此外，科学家还面临着与疫情相关的其他职业普遍存在的压力源（例如，儿童保育、老年人照料）。由于这些活动大多对女性的影响更大，疫情可能加剧了科学界的性别差距。我们分析了2019年1月至2021年7月期间提交给英国物理学会（IOP）旗下57种学术期刊的119,592篇稿件的通讯作者自我认定的性别，这些稿件来自151个国家，涉及天文学与天体物理学、生物科学、环境科学、材料学、数学、物理学以及跨学科研究等学科领域。我们考量了国家、期刊以及疫情前与疫情期间的差异。82.9%的稿件（性别认定稿件子集中为99,114篇）由通讯作者自我认定了性别。在这些稿件中，作者男性占82.1%，女性占17.8%，非二元性别占0.08%。所有国家（各国具体数值：范围0.0 - 100.0%，中位数86.1%）以及每本期刊（各期刊具体数值范围6,37 - 91.5%，中位数83.7%）的大多数作者均为男性。与疫情前（16.5%）相比，疫情期间女性作者的贡献略高（18.7%）。然而，在疫情之前，女性提交稿件的比例一直在上升，而这一数值在疫情期间有所放缓。与我们的假设相反，我们并未发现疫情期间女性提交的稿件减少，尽管疫情前明显的稿件提交增长速度放缓了。在疫情前和疫情期间，所有期刊、国家和领域的作者绝大多数都是男性。关于疫情对科研产出的其他衡量标准（例如，被接受的稿件、教学）、科研地位（例如，初级学者与高级学者）以及疫情之前和期间持续存在的潜在性别失衡的影响，还需要进一步研究。
