Female academic parents — especially those with younger children — have disproportionately lost research time during the pandemic, according to a new working paper released by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

When Covid-19 began to spread in the United States, and K-12 schools and day cares closed, experts worried that women would assume more child-care duties. Unable to sacrifice their service or teaching work, they’d have less time to write grant proposals, submit essays, or conduct studies, potentially hampering their careers in the long term.

That initial prediction seems to be bearing out, at least among nearly 20,000 respondents to a new survey conducted by Tatyana Deryugina, an associate professor of finance at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Olga Shurchkov, an associate professor of economics at Wellesley College, and Jenna E. Stearns, an assistant professor of economics at the University of California at Davis. Their findings still must undergo peer review.