Early evidence suggests that women, including female researchers, are disproportionately affected by the \mbox{COVID-19} pandemic, with negative consequences to their productivity. Here, we test this hypothesis by analyzing the proportion of male and female researchers that publish scientific papers during the pandemic. We use data from biomedical preprint servers and Springer-Nature journals to show that the fraction of women publishing during the pandemic drops significantly across disciplines and research topics, after controlling for temporal trends. The impact is particularly pronounced for biomedical papers related to COVID-19 research. Further, by geocoding author's affiliations, we show that gender disparities are exacerbated in poorer countries, even though these countries had less of a gender gap in research prior to the pandemic. Our results illustrate how exceptional events like a global pandemic can further amplify gender inequalities in research. Our work could inform fairer scientific evaluation practices, especially for early-career female researchers who may be disproportionately affected by the pandemic.

中文翻译：

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COVID-19 放大了研究中的性别差异

早期证据表明，包括女性研究人员在内的女性受到\mbox{COVID-19} 大流行的影响不成比例，对她们的生产力产生了负面影响。在这里，我们通过分析大流行期间发表科学论文的男性和女性研究人员的比例来检验这一假设。我们使用来自生物医学预印本服务器和 Springer-Nature 期刊的数据表明，在控制了时间趋势后，大流行期间女性发表文章的比例在跨学科和研究主题中显着下降。这种影响对于与 COVID-19 研究相关的生物医学论文尤为明显。此外，通过地理编码作者的隶属关系，我们表明较贫穷国家的性别差异加剧，即使这些国家在大流行之前的研究中性别差距较小。我们的结果说明了像全球大流行这样的特殊事件如何进一步放大研究中的性别不平等。我们的工作可以为更公平的科学评估实践提供信息，特别是对于可能受大流行影响不成比例的早期职业女性研究人员。