Maintaining a gendered perspective in scientific meetings during the COVID-19 pandemic
Authors: Berit Lange
Journal: The Lancet (2020)

Several studies have pointed towards the COVID-19 pandemic's potential to negatively affect career paths of women in science.1Wenham C Smith J Morgan R COVID-19: the gendered impacts of the outbreak.Lancet. 2020; 395: 846-848Summary Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (1080) Google Scholar, 2Burki T The indirect impact of COVID-19 on women.Lancet Infect Dis. 2020; 20: 904-905Summary Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (176) Google Scholar Although the impact on manuscript submissions and publications, as one career path mechanism, has been well documented,3Gabster BP van Daalen K Dhatt R Barry M Challenges for the female academic during the COVID-19 pandemic.Lancet. 2020; 395: 1968-1970Summary Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (235) Google Scholar an area that is often difficult to elucidate as part of the mechanisms underlying differential progress of male and female researchers is that of invitations to give scientific talks and to chair scientific meetings. Here, the merit of such an invitation is not always transparent or as easy to assess as a publication record. However, these activities are key to a researcher's academic success.4de Leon FLL McQuillin B The role of conferences on the pathway to academic impact: evidence from a natural experiment.SSRN. 2018; (published online March 20.) (preprint)https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2507361Google Scholar Cancellations and reorganisation of scientific meetings during the COVID-19 pandemic present an opportunity to consider the consequences of these decisions. In October, 2020, a scientific congress of cardiology, cardiosurgery, and paediatric cardiology was held under the patronage of the German Society of Cardiology. Due to the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, the meeting was held virtually, and for that reason, the organising committee felt that the event needed shortening substantially. Thus, 37 of 82 speakers and chairs were disinvited a few days before the congress. 29 (41%) of 71 male speakers (95% CI 29–53%) were disinvited, whereas eight (73%) of 11 female speakers (39–94%) were disinvited, bringing the female speaker participation down from 13% to 7% of speakers. With CIs overlapping (in part due to how few women were invited), it cannot be said whether the higher proportion of disinvited female speakers was coincidental or not. If there was a difference, it could also well be that unconscious gender bias by the organising committee (consisting of five men and one woman) was not behind the decision, but that the committee considered a range of factors, such as seniority, specialty, or external affiliation of the speaker. Nevertheless, I believe that this example highlights how important it is for organising committees of scientific meetings to apply a gendered perspective to the difficult task of inviting and disinviting researchers to give scientific talks. I would also suggest that data on these kinds of cancellations and reorganisations in academia are collected during the COVID-19 pandemic to assess how diversity in research is enacted when resources, such as presentation time, are scarce. I was one of the women who was disinvited to give a talk about my work. I declare no other competing interests. COVID-19: the gendered impacts of the outbreakPolicies and public health efforts have not addressed the gendered impacts of disease outbreaks.1 The response to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) appears no different. We are not aware of any gender analysis of the outbreak by global health institutions or governments in affected countries or in preparedness phases. Recognising the extent to which disease outbreaks affect women and men differently is a fundamental step to understanding the primary and secondary effects of a health emergency on different individuals and communities, and for creating effective, equitable policies and interventions. Full-Text PDF