Unequally Productive

Open-source software development peaked during the COVID-19 pandemic. But the lockdown measures put in place may have affected male and female developers' productivity differently, a recent study claims.

The global economy has been struggling under the pandemic and related lockdown measures. Yet in some sectors, stringent lockdowns might have actually caused a boost in productivity. In their latest study, Lena Hipp and Markus Konrad investigate the world of open-source software development. The authors compare the amount of software packages published before and during the global lockdown in 2020. Taken from GitHub, the world’s largest social coding community, their data included over 150,000 developers across 37 countries.

The authors find that both men and women were more productive during lockdown, especially during periods of workplace closure. However, male productivity increases were stronger, whereas female productivity rose only if governments did not shut down public schools. This suggests that the Covid-19 pandemic may indeed have contributed to increased gender inequalities in professional advancement.

Lena Hipp and Markus Konrad: Has Covid-19 increased gender inequalities in professional advancement? Cross-country evidence on productivity differences between male and female software developers. Journal of Family Research, 2021.

11/22/21 /fjb