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Objective: This study examines gender and socioeconomic inequalities in parental psychological wellbeing (parenting stress and psychological distress) during the COVID19 pandemic in Germany. Background: The dramatic shift of childcare and schooling responsibility from formal institutions to private households during the pandemic has put families under enormous stress and raised concerns about caregivers' health and wellbeing. Despite the overwhelming media attention to families' wellbeing, to date limited research has examined parenting stress and parental psychological distress during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly in Germany. Method: We analyzed four waves of panel data (N= 1,771) from an opt-in online survey, which was conducted between March 2020 and April 2021. Multivariable OLS regressions were used to estimate variations in the pandemic's effects on parenting stress and psychological distress by various demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. Results: Overall, levels of parenting stress and psychological distress increased during the pandemic. During the first and third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, mothers, parents with children younger than 11 years, parents with two or more children, parents working from home as well as parents with financial insecurity experienced higher parenting stress than other sociodemographic groups. Moreover, women, respondents with lower incomes, single parents, and parents with younger children experienced higher levels of psychological distress than other groups. Conclusion: Gender and socioeconomic inequalities in parents' psychological wellbeing increased among the study participants during the pandemic.
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Objective: This article analyzed gender differences in professional advancement following the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic based on data from open-source software developers in 37 countries. Background: Men and women may have been affected differently from the social distancing measures implemented to contain the Covid-19 pandemic. Given that men and women tend to work in different jobs and that they have been unequally involved in childcare duties, school and workplace closings may have impacted men's and women's professional lives unequally. Method: We analyzed original data from the world's largest social coding community, GitHub. We first estimated a Holt-Winters forecast model to compare the predicted and the observed average weekly productivity of a random sample of male and female developers (N=177,480) during the first lockdown period in 2020. To explain the crosscountry variation in the gendered effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on software developers' productivity, we estimated two-way fixed effects models with different lockdown measures as predictors - school and workplace closures, in particular. Results: In most countries, both male and female developers were, on average, more productive than predicted, and productivity increased for both genders with increasing lockdown stringency. When examining the effects of the most relevant types of lockdown measures separately, we found that stay-at-home restrictions increased both men's and women's productivity and that workplace closures also increased the number of weekly contributions on average - but for women, only when schools were open. Conclusion: Having found gender differences in the effect of workplace closures contingent on school and daycare closures within a population that is relatively young and unlikely to have children (software developers), we conclude that the Covid-19 pandemic may indeed have contributed to increased gender inequalities in professional advancement.
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INTRODUCTION Immunosuppressive therapies used to treat inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) are associated with an increased risk of infections, including vaccine-preventable diseases (VDP). Though patients with IBD have lower vaccination rates than the general population, no studies have assessed whether there are disparities in vaccination rates among patients with IBD. Determining if these disparities exist is of importance to assure high uptake of the a COVID-19 vaccine. The aim of this study was to determine if racial or ethnic disparities existed in immunization rates among patients with IBD at two tertiary referral medical centers. METHODS This was a retrospective case control study of patients with IBD at two tertiary referral IBD centers which included urban and rural patients. Patients who were 18 years or above and were seen in IBD clinic between 09/2019 and 02/2020 immunization rates. Each patient needed an active record in the Wisconsin Immunization Registry, which has very high rates of immunization documentation and is close to a comprehensive immunization record. For each patient, the WIR was accessed to obtain immunization data for pneumococcal 13 (PCV13), pneumococcal 23 (PPSV23) and influenza. Data analysis involved a Pearson’s chi-squared test for categorical variables. RESULTS In total 1968 patients with IBD were included in the study. Demographics are in Table 1. Average age was 46.8 years. 53% patients were female and 47% were male. 90.7% were White and 6.3% were Black. There was no significant difference between the number of female vs male patients. Black patients had significantly lower rate of influenza vaccination rates than white patients in for two influenza seasons (2019-2020, 2018-2019). (Table 2) There was no difference in pneumococcal immunization rates among the groups. Female patients had a significantly higher rate of influenza vaccination rates than male patients for each season. (Table 3) CONCLUSION This is the first study to demonstrate racial and gender disparities in influenza vaccination rates among patients with IBD. Future studies are needed to determine causes for and strategies to remediate racial and gender disparities in immunization rates. Identifying these barriers is imperative especially since certain ethnic and racial groups are at increased risk for a COVID illness and may display vaccine hesitancy. Efforts to ensure all patients with IBD have high uptake for COVID 19 vaccines is essential.(Table presented)