#GAReads | How female scientists are losing out during the pandemic and why it matters
photo credit: SJ Objio, via Unsplash
“How female scientists are losing out during the pandemic and why it matters”:
Many diseases, including Covid-19, can attack men and women in different ways. Why this is depends on a complex mix of biology and behavior that can be difficult to untangle.
But we do know that these differences are more likely to be considered if medical research involves female scientists, which makes the current state of scientific endeavor on Covid-19, where women are more underrepresented as authors than ever, all the more worrying.
The numbers are clear: Some 1,370 papers have been published in medical journals about Covid-19 involving 6,722 authors but only 34% of these were female, according to research published last week by Ana-Catarina Pinho-Gomes, a researcher at The George Institute for Global Health at the University of Oxford.
It's a problem that goes beyond gender equity and fairness. It could impact how we understand the coronavirus itself, said Pinho-Gomes.
"Women's voices are being heard less in the scientific response to the pandemic," she said.