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    • COVID-19 Business Impact Center
      COVID-19 Business Impact Center
      Gender Inequality in Research Productivity During the COVID-19 Pandemic
      27 Jul 2020Working Paper Summaries

      Gender Inequality in Research Productivity During the COVID-19 Pandemic

      by Ruomeng Cui, Hao Ding, and Feng Zhu
      Analysis of data from the largest open-access repositories for social science in the world finds that female researchers’ productivity significantly dropped relative to that of male researchers as a result of the lockdown in the United States.
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      Author Abstract

      We study the disproportionate impact of the lockdown as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak on female and male academics’ research productivity in social science. We collect data from the largest open-access preprint repository for social science on 41,858 research preprints in 18 disciplines produced by 76,832 authors across 25 countries in a span of two years. We find that during the 10 weeks after the lockdown in the United States, although the total research productivity increased by 35%, female academics’ productivity dropped by 13.9% relative to that of male academics. We also show that several disciplines drive such gender inequality. Finally, we find that this intensified productivity gap is more pronounced for academics in top-ranked universities, and the effect exists in six other countries.


      Paper Information

      • Full Working Paper Text
      • Working Paper Publication Date: June 2020
      • HBS Working Paper Number: HBS Working Paper #20-129
      • Faculty Unit(s): Technology and Operations Management
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      Feng Zhu
      Piramal Associate Professor of Business Administration
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