COVID-19 gender policy changes support female scientists and improve research quality.

With more time being spent on caregiving responsibilities during the COVID-19 pandemic, female scientists' productivity dropped. When female scientists conduct research, identity factors are better incorporated in research content. In order to mitigate damage to the research enterprise, funding agencies can play a role by putting in place gender equity policies that support all applicants and ensure research quality. A national health research funder implemented gender policy changes that included extending deadlines and factoring sex and gender into COVID-19 grant requirements. Following these changes, the funder received more applications from female scientists, awarded a greater proportion of grants to female compared to male scientists, and received and funded more grant applications that considered sex and gender in the content of COVID-19 research. Further work is urgently required to address inequities associated with identity characteristics beyond gender.

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Copyright © 2021 the Author(s). Published by PNAS.

Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts

Competing interest statement: H.O.W. holds a funded grant as principal investigator from the second competition described in the paper. J.H. is employed by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Institute of Gender and Health. C.T. is a Scientific Institute director at Canadian Institutes of Health Research and is therefore partially employed by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.