Women’s Working Conditions during COVID-19: A Review of the Literature and a Research Agenda
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The article summarizes main ideas and findings of recent literature (2020-2022) about women´s working conditions during Covid-19 found in a systematic search. It points out the vast corpus and relevance of the topic in the academic research and it discovers topics less studied.
Despite the big effort of a systemic research, three main general weaknesses are found. First, the article lacks a framework based on literature review where the main findings can be related to. The five lines of the results are not linked to previous literature, reducing substantially the potential of contribution of the article.
Second, methodologically, it explains clearly what and why articles are in. However, there are some relevant decisions that are not explained which reduce the potential contribution of this interesting work. On the one hand, it includes only Scopus, while there are other relevant sources, such as Web of Science. The inclusion of both sources would significantly increase the power of this review. If not possible, at least, a methodological explanation of this selection should be included. On the other hand, there is not a clear explanation on how the review has been done. Which criteria are used to include or not the information of the 129 documents? How has the review been done? Has some software been used? Or has it been manually? There is more need of methodological explanation. Moreover, there are many of the documents revised not included in the article, as normal, but explanations of why or how the process has been carried out would improve the review robustness.
Third, the results and especially the discussion do not clearly provide the clear contribution to the literature on women´s working conditions. In general, it is not clear where the phenomena explained are happening, although sometimes is explained. Some explanations and synthesis about countries or regions where particular working conditions are present.
Considering specific aspects of the article, I would clarify from the introduction that the five dimensions are included and a paragraph with the structure of the article is missing. The theoretical framework and previous evidence is totally missing, so I would add a section for this.
In the figure 1, information on the exclusion criteria for each step (in particular first part of screening) would improve the explanatory capacity of the figure, as including specifically the automation tools used.
In the results section, I miss more clarification on what is going to be explained. It may be for the lack of methodological explanation, but something is missing there.
In lines 208-213, there is not an explanation of what happens with women without kids while in line 208 they are included. It seems as if something is missing or maybe the women with no children should not be included in the initial sentence. In line 218, it is not clear what happens with women with children from 0 to 6. Is the evidence showing that mothers with children from 6 to 12 are worse than those from 0 to 6? In which countries? Is general or in particular countries?
In general, I insist in the need of including geographical areas to understand better if there are evidence worldwide or related to particular regions, and in that case, in which regions and about what.
In line 255-256, I would explained further how the sentence is related to working conditions.
I wish these comments could help to improve the article, as a systematic review of the topic is very relevant, and it can be an interesting contribution to the literature. However, more research work needs to be done to clarify which evidence is found and how they relate to the present literature corpus.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
I commend the necessary work done here, and note its usefulness towards advancing issues around gender equality.
However, there are a few issues that are outstanding in the paper and which I feel need to be addressed. These pertain more to the organization of the paper than the contents themselves but considering the nature of this paper, it is this very same organization that can help the paper excel (or not).
Below follows a list of questions or recommendations.
Page 2, line 61 - The paper says that it only selected papers written in English. However, there is no reason given for this, and there are no considerations anywhere on the paper about the potential limitations of this choice.
P 3, lines 81-86 - The paper identifies several areas (or dimensions) that supposedly help readers understand the main results. However, no explanation on how these areas were identified or selected is given; as I will show further down, the breakdown of dimensions made here is questionable at best. Furthermore, there are absolutely no identifying or summarizing tables of the studies found, which make it harder to parse any potential trends (or lack thereof) in the literature. What are the main origins of the papers, in geographical terms?, in scientific terms?, with what funding?, using what methodologies?, using what epistemological framework?. with what sample sizes?, with what gender composition of authors?. None of these questions are replied and no actual information is given, making it seem as if all research is interchangeable with one another, and denying the readers the possibility of understanding the origins and dynamics of research on this topic.
Page 3, line 87 and following - Despite the fact that caregiving and household work is a dimension in and of itself, the same issue appears again as a central feature of other dimensions (eg page 5, lines 163 and following, page 6 lines 208 and following, lines 239 and following, page 7 lines 254 and following). As stated above, this brings into question the organization of the paper, and thus the analysis and presentation of the results, especially in the absence of a critical summary of the data, or of analyses of any connections between variables in the studies and outcomes.
Page 4, lines 127 to 132 - the quote given has an error and shows up partially repeated.
Page 5, lines 163-165 - Elsewhere the manuscript mostly addresses job loss, but here it talks about "regaining many points", which is both confusing and contradictory. Again, because of the way the paper is laid out, this bit of data might make perfect sense but in the absence of a narrative that helps the reader understand, it just looks like random studies with single conclusions are being cited for reasons that are not clear.
Page 5, lines 169-177 - The concept of "voluntary job loss" seems controversial; if we consider the structural conditions that the paper itself identifies (patriarchy, covid-19, systemic job inequality), what does the paper mean by "voluntary", and if it is indeed voluntary, why then is it job loss?
Page 5, line 179 - The paper mentions "women-led", but it seems that it is addressing those areas of work where there are more women than men employed, However, this would not constitute women leading the work, considering the famous glass-ceiling effect.
Page 6, lines 203-204 - The term "developed" and "developing" countries are more and more falling out of use; see https://blogs.worldbank.org/opendata/should-we-continue-use-term-developing-world
Page 6, lines 231-237 - This isolated paragraph about production levels (when the header purports to be about working hours) seems out of place, and even more so considering that academic work is the only type of work contemplated, as well as its specificity.
Page 6, line 251 - Earlier there were references to women leaving their employment, and on unpaid labour, and now the emphasis is on the fact that women do not leave their paid work. Again, the lack of a clear narrative and structure to the paper just makes every bit of information seem disjointed and does not create a clear notion of what the research shows in an aggregate way.
Likewise, the paper does not seem to situate itself in how it reads the role of social and historical pressures on women, considering how it shifts between talking about personal decisions and how it addresses systemic pressure. Furthermore, the paper seems to discount that a lot of the pressure around child-raising has to do with the fact that fathers tend to disavow that responsibility - other issues around schooling, extra time spent in child-rearing etc are never in the paper addressed as results of masculine irresponsibility.
The paper also does not address the issues pertaining to the dislocation of the labour force to platformed labour, nor does it consider other areas of work, such as sex work, although technically because very little attention is given to the specifics of the papers, it is unclear which areas of activity fall under the purview of the reviewed literature or not.
Finally, especially on lines 282-284, the paper is exceedingly vague about which policies should be or could be implemented, with what targets, and what potential benefits - especially considering what was learned from the literature.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
With much interest I read your review for Social Sciences. It is very timely and can help scholars doing covid-19 research. My main point is your inclusion criterium after screening. You only include Q1 yournals (which is quite arbitrary) and than select the working conditions. I would argue that you would first need to select on working conditions and than trim down to see how many studies are eligible. This would leave you with a much better overview. Now the research seems very US-based. I would like to see how the studies presented are based on what "type" of countries, is it really US based or Europe based or is it something else? When checking the reference list I see: Japan, Belgium, Israel, maybe more? That would be a great addition to this paper.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
I would like to congratulate the author(s) for the work done on the manuscript, which shows outstanding improvement.
However, there is one detail on methodology that still requires further clarification, and which the editing seems to have made more obscure than it was.
This pertains to page 3, both lines 322-324, and footnote 6. It is unclear to me how and why a study counts as "generalizable to other countries", considering that generalizability usually comes from a mix of the methods deployed for sampling and analysis, and the theoretical framework used, and that this paper includes papers that have only qualitative or secondary-data analysis - cf. page 5 - which would not by its very nature be generalizable. Furthermore, the exclusion noted on footnote 6 makes - to me - no sense, since the population studied doesn't by itself preclude any more generalizability than many other of the studies used. When read in conjunction, lines 322-324 and footnote 6 almost make it seem that the study excluded sources that do not come from very industrialized countries, which would not be a valid method of exclusion for the work at hand. Because I am certain that this is not the case, I would ask the author(s) to please clarify this specific issue.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
