  We study the disproportionate impact of the lockdown as a result of the
COVID-19 outbreak on female and male academics' research productivity in social
science. The lockdown has caused substantial disruptions to academic
activities, requiring people to work from home. How this disruption affects
productivity and the related gender equity is an important operations and
societal question. We collect data from the largest open-access preprint
repository for social science on 41,858 research preprints in 18 disciplines
produced by 76,832 authors across 25 countries over a span of two years. We use
a difference-in-differences approach leveraging the exogenous pandemic shock.
Our results indicate that, in the 10 weeks after the lockdown in the United
States, although the total research productivity increased by 35%, female
academics' productivity dropped by 13.9% relative to that of male academics. We
also show that several disciplines drive such gender inequality. Finally, we
find that this intensified productivity gap is more pronounced for academics in
top-ranked universities, and the effect exists in six other countries. Our work
points out the fairness issue in productivity caused by the lockdown, a finding
that universities will find helpful when evaluating faculty productivity. It
also helps organizations realize the potential unintended consequences that can
arise from telecommuting.
