The Impact Of Covid-19 Lock-Downs For European (Female) Immunologists - Our Views As Members Of The Efis Gender And Diversity Task Force

A task force on “Gender and diversity” was recently founded by the European Federation of Immunological Societies (EFIS). It aims at coordinating action on matters pertinent to our community that have a European (and beyond) dimension, in our case we want to promote diversity with respect to gender and ethnicity in immunology. Our group met for the first time in Belgrade, Serbia, in January 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic prevented a second in-person meeting, which we then scheduled to take place virtually in July 2020. In this article, we reflect on the effects and challenges of COVID-19 measurements for immunologists, and for female immunologists in particular, and immunology as a field. When the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19, a disease caused by the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), a pandemic in early spring 2020 (see here), European governments responded with an array of protective measures, which differed across the countries both in timing and strictness. Without exception, these measures affected personal lives and work of scientists around the globe in unprecedented ways. The strictest measures were complete or partial lock-downs, which resulted with stay-at-home regulations; in some countries, people were not allowed to leave their homes without a special permit. Unnoticed by many, an earthquake in Zagreb, Croatia, worsened the pandemic misfortune for scientists in that country [1]. In countries in which scientists had to stop most of the experimental work, those on tenure-track, post-docs, Ph.D. students or master students were especially affected [2]. Career-wise this group represents the most ‘’fragile’’ group of scientists because missing out on experiments for months is particularly difficult and a direct threat to their careers. Our strong belief is that it was and is a responsibility of supervisors, mentors, institutes and funding agencies to support all early career researchers. For instance, the major German funding institution, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, tried to mitigate negative effects by additional funds or deadline prolongations (see document here). In this respect, we think that our individual views from ten countries across Europe illustrate some over-arching issues, which surfaced with new vigor due to the pandemic. These are: (i) the biased burden of care-work typically placed on women, and (ii) the high risks and mental stress for early career scientists in a science system, which has a high level of financial/professional/personal insecurity. Both issues are a danger to the goal of diversity in science as well, further exacerbating the existing gender gap [3, 4]. On the upside, we think that (iii) the chances of digital communication for many aspects in research and teaching need to be mentioned. The realization that videoconferences can work very well and that not all meetings have to be in person will certainly add to our future means of communication. Many during the crisis have come to cherish the fact that time spent at airports, in traffic jams, or long commutes to work can be used much better. Therefore, some in-person/face to face meetings will simply vanish as they are unnecessary. At the very least, we believe that colleagues, employers and funding bodies need to understand this situation of mental stress, financial insecurity, missed opportunities, and the very real threat to career plans [2]. It was not easy when everyone worked from home, and it needed and still needs a special effort and additional empathy. It is also important to acknowledge the gendered perspective and the danger of losing hard-won ground for women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) again, as pointed out by Australian scientists (see document here). This was first highlighted by anecdotal evidence from editors of scientific journals [5], then surveys also later showed that the brunt of care-work at home was on women. This was especially challenging for mothers of young children (schools and kindergartens closed) or having sick dependents in the household, which made it much more difficult for the “carers” to work efficiently, and to write publications or grant applications [6, 7]. For example, in Spain only 29% of submitted projects had a female leader in the prestigious Instituto de Salud Carlos III (ISCIII) project call and just 28% of the grants were awarded to female principal investigators. Unfortunately, Spain is no exception regarding this imbalanced situation. As the Turkish representatives of the EFIS Task Force diversity team, Günnur Deniz and Ceren Ciraci started a survey in Turkey to determine the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on immunologists regardless of their gender. Currently, they sent the survey to approximately 250 members of the Turkish Society of Immunology, of whom 50 members responded. Data obtained so far indicate that 60% of the responding immunologists spent less time on academic work during the pandemic than before. Interestingly, 20% of the survey participants stated that the COVID-19 pandemic had hampered their studies, while 30% believe it never affected them. About half of the respondents said that the on-going pandemic only partly affected them. Other data from the survey suggest that 50% of the participants are not worried about losing their jobs due to the pandemic, while 40% were partly worried and 10% definitely worried about losing their jobs (unpublished data). By using the social media of the Italian Society of Immunology, Clinical Immunology and Allergology (SIICA Facebook and twitter accounts) and with the help of the SIICA Junior Faculty, Francesca Di Rosa collected some information on the changes in the time dedicated to work by male and female immunologists during the COVID-19 pandemic. The most evident effect of the lock-down was a 10-hour/week drop in the time dedicated to work by women with children, going from about 45 hours to 35 hours per week. In contrast, men (with or without children), and women without children did not report a similar drop. A survey performed by a team of researchers at the Politecnico University of Milan focused on the space wherein university faculty members all over Italy worked during the COVID-19 pandemic [8]. Most of those working in “wet research” biomedical fields such as immunology had been working full time at the University before the lock-down. One question of the survey was whether at the time of the pandemic they did their work from home in a room of their own, or rather in a shared room. The difference between men and women was striking only 31% of women versus 57% of men performed their work from home in a room of their own (Rossi-Lamastra and Migliore, manuscript in preparation). About a century after publication of Virginia Woolf's famous book, entitled “A Room of One's Own” [9], we still have a long way to go to achieve gender equality in Academia. Moreover, at a recent EMBL online conference “The impact of the COVID-19 crisis on women in science: Challenges and solutions”, speakers highlighted the global experience of women scientists, and elaborated on many of these aspects [10]. In the light of all these experiences, a special “Women in Immunology” session is planned during the European Congress of Immunology 2021, dedicated to the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on women immunologists with the contributions of renowned scientist speakers. Our task Force also plans to provide a grant and an award for scientists in minority groups in developing countries within EFIS member states. One additional aspect warrants consideration as well. Obviously, communicating immunology and fighting fake-news became very important. For instance, the German Society of Immunology together with the German Society of Virology published a statement about vaccines (see statement here). This was an important step to help counter-act the worrying developments of calls to let the pandemic run almost freely in the hope of achieving herd-immunity, of fake-news spreading, and a rise in misinformation by anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists. The International Union of Immunological Societies set up webinars with excellent talks about COVD-19-related science (see here). In some cases, scientists stepped up as great communicators for public understanding of science in the media and social networks. Many more shared their knowledge in their own, smaller circles. We certainly need more of this, and – for this area as everywhere – the female voices and perspectives need to be heard, not ignored or silenced by journalists and politics [11]. As the pandemic will continue most likely for months, perhaps even years, until a vaccine, a cure or efficient drugs are available, we need to learn quickly and limit the damage to science and scientists where possible. Infection rates are rising again in many countries since the end of summer 2020. Shoulder shrugging is not an option because the consequences are dire if too many talented researchers decide that academic science, as a profession, will fail them by default. Diversity matters for making science better because “diverse research teams are more likely to come up with new ideas and perspectives” (see here and [12]). This is even more important because together with virology, our field has become a focus of global interest, and suddenly huge grants for studying SARS-Cov-2/COVID-19 became available as well. Certainly, SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 will be a topic at the next European Congress of Immunology, ECI, scheduled to take place in Belgrade in 2021. We will offer a gender and diversity perspective at this conference as well. There is no doubt that the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has impacted us all and will continue to do so. On the one hand, combined immunology, virology and epidemiology knowledge helps finding solutions for keeping the virus at bay (e.g. by identifying the major routes of exposure, or the development of an effective vaccine; now expected in 2021 [13]). On the other hand, the crisis has laid bare the necessity to communicate science and how we work. There is room for improvement in clearly translating scientific processes and knowledge to the public, but also for ensuring a fair presentation of gender and diversity in science, e.g. in the media. Wet lab research at the bench came to a stop almost completely in many countries, with exceptions for COVID-19 related work. For an experimental science such as immunology, this meant that the mainstay of all our work was impeded dramatically. However, the lock-down measures made everyone realize that working from home is possible in today's digital world. Indeed, remote work may increase productivity if conditions are right and if this instrument is used sensibly. This concerns meetings, writing, data analyses and various “dry” research. On the downside, working from home can lead to isolation and stress as the line between work and home blurs, or because the fruitful interactions of scientific discussions decrease. An important aspect was what may be called the penalization that comes as a result of care taking and home-schooling of children or nursing sick dependents during lock-downs. Women scientists took on these duties in particular and found themselves to be unduly limited in their professional output and the acquisition of grants. Overall, the various lock-down regulations have delayed most research projects (albeit to different extents). Clearly, those on non-permanent contracts, especially early and mid-career scientists, are likely to have suffered the most; they suffered not only by the lack of experimental progress but also by the lack of day to day live interactions with their peers and supervisors. The latter may have affected team spirit and mental wellbeing, which added to the pressure to finalize projects in time, as this is essential to further their careers, and to keep labs going (Figure 1). First, issues of gender and diversity as exposed by the pandemic need to be acknowledged and facts of biases and the causes of unfairness no longer ignored. Second, based on this knowledge, the aim of equity must be integrated into the science policy of funding agencies, any evaluation of scientific progress, and academic structures and decisions. They must facilitate and safeguard the contribution of all scientists, to take advantage of true diversity of contributions for the advancement of knowledge and to preserve young talents for the future of science. This might be done by prolonging contracts or postponing evaluation deadlines and removing any intrinsic/unconscious/de facto penalization for raising children, as regards the effects of corona on scientists. Third, on the local level, institutional bodies need to exercise strong leadership, and establish measures to mentor and help their staff coping with the financial, professional and mental stress caused by the pandemic, which is by far not over yet. Finally, this can be the time to open a discussion in the society about the current scientific system, which has financial/professional/personal insecurity for scientists built in by default, at a time when reliable and independent science is needed more than ever to guard against fake news and manipulations, to offer solutions and suggest interventions at a global level. All URLs were last accessed October 28, 2020.