COVID-19 and Caregiving IS Researchers: In the Same Storm, but not in the Same Boat

In early 2020, reports emerged about the negative effects of COVID-19 on the productivity of female researchers who were taking care of their families during the pandemic, while male researchers spent their time in lockdown writing more papers and increasing their productivity. We wondered if the pandemic was affecting caregivers (mostly female) in the Information Systems (IS) discipline in the same way. If it was, we hoped to be able to suggest what actions caregivers might take in response. As an approximate way of distinguishing caregivers from non-caregivers in our analysis, we used gender. The results of our analysis are mixed, but they do suggest that COVID-19 has had some negative impacts on IS researchers who are caregivers. We offer several recommendations to caregiving IS researchers for mitigating the effects of the pandemic on their professional lives.