Data | Women researchers had fewer opportunities for research due to family obligations and care-giving duties
The Hindu
In India, more than 90% of women on average, participated in domestic work compared to 27% of men
Between January and May 2020, there was an explosion in the number of scholarly articles submitted to journals, which was partly driven by COVID-19-related research. A study of manuscripts submitted to Elsevier journals states that women submitted considerably fewer manuscripts than men. This trend persisted even during the first wave of the pandemic despite the rise in the submission of articles. Moreover, the gap between submissions by men and women across areas of research was more pronounced for the younger cohort, suggesting that young women researchers had fewer opportunities for research due to family obligations and caregiving duties.
This hypothesis — that domestic work and caregiving duties have been delegated to women, affecting their productivity — holds true for Indian women in general if the Time Use Surveys by the National Statistical Organisation are considered. A majority of Indian women were engaged in unpaid domestic work, while men participated in employment-related activities.