Where are the women? Gender inequalities in COVID-19 research authorship

Under-representation of female researchers tends to create under-representation of issues that are relevant to women in research — in our current situation this may create important gaps in our understanding of COVID-19. [...]we investigated whether gender differences existed in authorship of COVID-19 research since the onset of the pandemic. [...]although we employed a widely used and validated software, it is still possible that it may have misclassified the gender of some authors. [...]COVID-19 is a high-profile and dynamic topic where women may either be overtly or covertly denied access to COVID-19 research, because of its anticipated high impact.6 Third, women may have less time to commit to research during the pandemic.7 Fourth, COVID-19-related papers are likely to be affected as much as other papers by gender bias in the peer-review process.8 Fifth, a relatively large amount of the early COVID-19 publications are commissioned articles, which are, in general, more likely to be published by men.9 There is a pressing need to reduce these gender inequalities because women’s participation in research is associated with a higher likelihood of reporting gender and sex-disaggregated data,4 which in turn improve our understanding of the clinical and epidemiological dimensions of COVID-19. A further step would be to consider gender quotas, as these have shown to help rectify women’s under-representation in prominent positions, for instance, in political, economic and academic systems.12 Conclusion Women have been under-represented in COVID-19 research since the beginning of the outbreak.