When universities across the United States shut down in March 2020, Alycia Halladay, chief science officer of the Autism Science Foundation (ASF), started to check in with the researchers her organization funds—primarily postdoctoral fellows and new professors, as well as some undergraduate and graduate students.
Getting in touch with grantees gave Halladay an opportunity to reassure them that their funding would be extended. But she also got a glimpse into the challenges many early-career researchers were encountering.
Their experiences were far from uniform, she recalls. “Some [researchers] were saying, ‘Well, things are shut down, but I can still have access to my database from home, so I can do some work.’” Others told her a different story, saying things like: “Literally, I can’t enroll one more subject. So I’m at a halt.”
She noticed that those having an especially tough time tended to be early-career women. Like women in many ...
