The impact of the pandemic-enforced lockdown on the scholarly productivity of women academics in South Africa

•It is the first comprehensive study on the impact of the pandemic lockdown on women's academic work, including research, teaching, and administration.•It builds on, extends, and we believe enriches recent and important studies in research policy titled which gender gap? Factors affecting researchers’ scientific impact in science and medicine and gender discrepancies in publication productivity of high-performing life science graduate students.•Research from the African continent on gender inequalities in the academic and scientific enterprise, given that published work from western countries still enjoys an almost exclusive presence in leading journals; this is not simply a case for formal inclusion, but for a broadening of perspectives and insights from other parts of the world.•It offers the first detailed empirical analysis of the pandemic disruption of academic work with new findings and insights related to the emotional lives of women, their career prospects, and their workloads by stage of career, etc.•It points to clear policy directions for higher education institutions to remedy the negative consequences of the pandemic lockdown for women's academic work and their professional futures. The underrepresentation of women in research is well-documented, in everything from participation and leadership to peer review and publication. Even so, in the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, early reports indicated a precipitous decline in women's scholarly productivity (both in time devoted to research and in journal publications) compared to pre-pandemic times. None of these studies, mainly from the Global North, could provide detailed explanations for the scale of this decline in research outcomes. Using a mixed methods research design, we offer the first comprehensive study to shed light on the complex reasons for the decline in research during the pandemic-enforced lockdown among 2,029 women academics drawn from 26 public universities in South Africa. Our study finds that a dramatic increase in teaching and administrative workloads, and the traditional family roles assumed by women while “working from home,” were among the key factors behind the reported decline in research activity among female academics in public universities. In short, teaching and administration effectively displaced research and publication—with serious implications for an already elusive gender equality in research. Finally, the paper offers recommendations that leaders and poli