Launched on March 10, 2020—a day before the WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic—the group of volunteer experts has become a valuable resource for thousands of followers who turn to its website and social media channels every day for reliable COVID-19 information. The effort is especially important as women are both disproportionately affected by the pandemic, and are also often their family’s information seekers about public health issues.

Several mothers interviewed for this article said they’re more aware than ever that raising compassionate kids, as well as successful ones, is important in the current climate.

The five women say they are paid tens of thousands of dollars less than men with similar qualifications. The university says it is “committed to pay equity.”

The pandemic is a new setback for women in academia who already faced obstacles on the path to advancing their research and careers.

Janet Kavandi, who recently retired from a senior NASA post, went to space three times and added fairness to the astronaut selection process.

"For me, not moving forward is not an option. While very different, it [the diagnosis] is very similar in a lot of ways to being the first woman distillery supervisor—because they just really didn’t accept me in the beginning—of being in physical chemistry grad school, because they don’t really accept you. But what I tried to do was not make a fuss about it and not notice it so much. Oh, I noticed it, of course, but you just keep going."