New column in Nature: How the pandemic could choke gender equity for female researchers in Denmark

Together with my colleagues in DANWISE I have written a column in Nature’s Career section.

During the COVID-19 situation, everyone working from home – men and women - are trying to balance work duties with household and care duties. But, with women classically devoting significantly more time to these duties, the increased responsibilities are likely to exacerbate the gender inequality we see in female funding success rates in academia.

DANWISE wanted to learn if the lockdown really had a greater impact on female researchers than on their male counterparts and distributed a survey at University of Copenhagen. Our results seem to support what we initially thought, that childcare obligations are threatening the recent advances we’ve seen towards gender equality for female researchers in Denmark.  

In the column, we argue that now, more than ever, it is important to make sure that female academics’ careers are not impeded by the long-term cumulative impacts of childcare, caregiving and service-related work. We present a number of initiatives that could be implemented by Universities and funding agencies to create a better gender balance, ensuring that the leaky pipeline for female researchers does not turn into a firehose.