The COVID-19 Pandemic is Widening the Gap for Women in STEM

The emergence of the COVID-19 virus in 2019 and its global spread in 2020 presented unprecedented challenges to the world. Prior to the pandemic, the disparities between women and men in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) persisted despite the many efforts to achieve gender parity, and it is important to note that women who are racial or ethnic minorities have been more significantly disadvantaged. To illustrate the disparity between women and men in STEM, the National Science Foundation3 reports that 41% of science and engineering doctorates were awarded to women in 2017 despite the fact that women made up 51.5% of the population in the US. The reasons for women being underrepresented are complex and involve a range of social and environmental factors, including negative stereotypes and implicit biases that propagate from schools to the workforce.