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Article at PNAS by Jessica L. Malisch, Breanna N. Harris, Shanen M. Sherrer, Kristy A. Lewis, Stephanie L. Shepherd, Pumtiwitt C. McCarthy, Jessica L. Spott, Elizabeth P. Karam, Naima Moustaid-Moussa, Jessica McCrory Calarco, Latha Ramalingam, Amelia E. Talley, Jaclyn E. Cañas-Carrell, Karin Ardon-Dryer, Dana A. Weiser, Ximena E. Bernal, and Jennifer Deitloff.

Introduction

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has upended almost every facet of academia (1). Almost overnight the system faced a sudden transition to remote teaching and learning, changes in grading systems, and the loss of access to research resources. Additionally, shifts in household labor, childcare, eldercare, and physical confinement have increased students’ and faculty’s mental health needs and reduced the time available to perform academic work. A pandemic naturally highlights privileges, such as financial security and access to mental health care. It also amplifies the mental, physical, social, and economic impacts attributable to preexisting inequities in academia. Making matters worse, in times of stress, such as pandemics, biased decision-making processes are favored (2), which threaten to deprioritize equity initiatives.

All this means that even among those with privileged positions, including many academics, women will likely bear a greater burden of this pandemic. The burden will be even heavier for women who face intersecting systems of oppression, such as ethnicity, race, sexual orientation, gender, age, economic class, dependent status, and/or ability. Thus, academia will need to enact solutions to retain and promote women faculty who already face disparities regarding merit, tenure, and promotion (3).

Here, we examine ways in which COVID-19 is amplifying known barriers to women’s career advancement. We propose actionable solutions, which include the formation of a Pandemic Response Faculty Fellow or Pandemic Faculty Merit Committee (PFMC), new/revised tenure and promotion metrics created by the aforementioned committee, and a framework to ensure that the new metrics and policies are adopted college-wide. We also caution against the popular tenure clock quick fix that poses a potential threat to a diverse future for academia.

Article at The Lancet, by Peter Baker, Alan White and Rosemary Morgan.

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic is shining a cruel light on the state of men's health globally. In 38 out of 43 countries for which provisional data were available, as of June 10, 2020, more men than women have died from COVID-19 despite a similar number of confirmed cases in each sex. In several countries, including the Netherlands, Dominican Republic, and Spain, about twice as many men as women have died from COVID-19. International Men's Health Week on June 15–21 is an opportune time to focus attention on this issue and the need for a new and systematic approach to improve the health of men generally.

Men and women are differentially affected by COVID-19. Although more men are dying from COVID-19, women are also substantially impacted by the disease. Their role as health workers and carers puts them at risk of infection, they have paid a heavy price economically and in terms of increased domestic burdens, and they have been even more likely than usual to experience domestic violence during lockdown. An equal role for women in global health leadership is required to ensure that their needs are included in policy. The differential harmful effects of the pandemic on gender and racial minorities must also be recognised.

IZA Discussion paper by Lídia Farré, Yarine Fawaz, Libertad González and Jennifer Graves. 

Abstract

The covid-19 pandemic led many countries to close schools and declare lockdowns during the Spring of 2020, with important impacts on the labor market. We document the effects of the covid-19 lockdown in Spain, which was hit early and hard by the pandemic and suffered one of the strictest lockdowns in Europe. We collected rich household survey data in early May of 2020. We document large employment losses during the lockdown, especially in “quarantined” sectors and non-​essential sectors that do not allow for remote work. Employment losses were mostly temporary, and hit lower-​educated workers particularly hard. Women were slightly more likely to lose their job than men, and those who remained employed were more likely to work from home. The lockdown led to a large increase in childcare and housework, given the closing of schools and the inability to outsource. We find that men increased their participation in housework and childcare slightly, but most of the burden fell on women, who were already doing most of the housework before the lockdown. Overall, we find that the covid-19 crisis appears to have increased gender inequalities in both paid and unpaid work in the short-​term.

Natalia Kanem, executive director of the UN Population Fund, is among experts warning about disrupted health services and a surge in gender-based violence. Sophie Cousins reports.