**4. Results**

For some respondents (13.4%), the pandemic afforded opportunities for advancement that otherwise would not have existed, and others (27.5%) said the pandemic did not affect their career advancement at all. Yet, that did not necessarily mean the pandemic had been easy to endure. The data shared in this report cover the 59.1% of respondents who described a negative effect on their career advancement. The effects ranged from mild to severe, and they may yet have long-term implications on women's career advancement. The women described missing out on pay raises, declining promotions, being fearful of looking for a better fitting job, and reevaluating their current career, mostly due to unsupportive employers and being employed in strongly affected industries. Other women faced more severe effects, such as enduring job loss and having to restart from the ground up because of minimal opportunity in their various fields. Although some of these effects were likely not gender specific and could have been experienced by anyone, national research [61] found that women were more likely to be in industries negatively affected by the pandemic and more likely to have made career sacrifices to focus on caregiving responsibilities. The analysis of the data yielded four primary themes: Everything Is on Hold, Lost or Relinquished Opportunity, Reevaluation of Career, and Experiences by Various Characteristics. When reading this section, keep in mind that the data were collected in January of 2021 [12].
