Here, we will summarise our general reflections from our 8 months of tracking data collection and reporting through the current iteration of our Report Card. First, we'll describe the challenges of data collection, then we will explore changes we observed in the reporting of socially relevant variables by each state.

We recap the process of creating our COVID-19 State Report Card, which tracks the comprehensiveness of state reporting of socially relevant variables for COVID-19 cases and fatalities. Here we also provide the grades and results from our February 2021 report card.

In a collaboration with the Harvard SOGIE Health Equity Research Collaborative, today the Harvard GenderSci Lab has a new post up on the Health Affairs blog about gaps in COVID-19 public health data collection on trans, non-binary, and gender-expansive people.

With media headlines such as “Urgent Action Needed on Disturbing Male Fertility,” the findings of Levine et al. (2017) received wide press coverage, including in alt-right online forums. And yes, we went to the dark web so you don’t have to. Here we document and analyze discourse on alt-right threads on 4CHAN, Reddit, and Twitter following the publication of the 2017 Levine et al. study that the GenderSci Lab critiques in our new paper.

In this Q & A, we ask Professor Stern more about the specific ways in which the alt-right animates fears of white male decline, revives biologically essentialist ideas about gender, and insinuates the authority of legitimate scholarship, in particular through appeals to science. We also invite her reflections on how interdisciplinary feminist science studies scholars can responsibly engage with the alt-right’s deeply problematic claims.

This post will dive deeply into what can be gleaned from these early studies comparing sperm quality across geographical regions within Europe for contextualizing current high-profile claims about the decline of sperm around the world . . . . “West” and “Other” are not tenable categories, and an analysis of their boundaries from multiple angles sees their geographic and demographic architectures crumble.

In this blog post, I’m going to walk through how sperm statistics are made by analyzing the 2017 paper by Levine et al., wherein the authors argue that sperm counts around the globe are dropping–but most particularly in “Western” countries and not “Other” countries. I highlight some key methodological choices that Levine et al. and others made while trying to gain insight into the state of global sperm counts.

Counting is usually assumed to be a pretty simple activity; it is, after all, one of the very first things that we learn at school . . . . In this blog post, I examine the ways in which sperm count is less straightforward than it might appear, and consider what this means for scientific research on global sperm count decline.

We wanted to understand whether sperm counts were truly declining and whether evidence supported the authors' claims of imminent danger to fertility, health, and the environment. That analysis led us to be skeptical of claims of dramatic global sperm decline leading to an imminent crisis in male fertility and health. We think the patterns hinted at in Levine et al.’s meta-analysis rather offer compelling evidence that sperm count can vary both pathologically and non-pathologically under different conditions and environments.

This piece takes a more in-depth look at the current reporting of individuals who identify as non-binary or who are unclassified by sex. The take-home, summarized in Tables 1 and 2 below, is that there are few states explictly collecting data on trans and nonbinary people, and that the ways in which states report “unknown” gender/sex lack transparency and are highly discordant across states.

Our findings are stark. Black men are far more likely to die than any other group; but Black women have over 3 times higher mortality rates than white or Asian/Pacific Islander men (Figure 1). Further, the sex disparity within race varies widely.

The GenderSci Lab is looking for two undergraduate research assistants to assist with the lab’s current project analyzing sex & gender disparities in COVID-19 outcomes.

Highlights from December’s Report Card

From September to December, the average state score increased from 6.65 (D grade) to 6.78 (D grade) on a scale of 0-10.

Both Montana and New Mexico saw score increases of 3. This takes Montana’s score to a B grade, and New Mexico’s score to a D grade.

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Following the initial release of the GenderSci Lab’s Health Affairs Blog, Socially Relevant Variables in US State COVID-19 Surveillance Reporting: A Report Card, at the end of June, the lab has continued to track changes in state reporting of socially relevant variables for COVID-19 cases and fatalities. Data availability is becoming increasingly critical as many states experience a second wave of infections.

The “Gender/Sex Disparities in COVID-19 Outcomes” guide and toolkit is an open-access Google Slides presentation offered by the Harvard GenderSci Lab for adoption in introductory-level gender studies, feminist science studies, and health sciences courses. The presentation helps students develop a critical and intersectional understanding of sex disparities in COVID-19 outcomes.

Following the initial release of the GenderSci Lab’s Health Affairs Blog, Socially Relevant Variables in US State COVID-19 Surveillance Reporting: A Report Card, at the end of June, the lab has continued to track changes in state reporting of socially relevant variables for COVID-19 cases and fatalities. Data availability is becoming increasingly critical as many states experience a second wave of infections.

As governments and private companies take up the charge of deep space travel and occupation, a question arises. If humans are to live away from Earth, how will they reproduce themselves? Here, the GenderSci Lab’s Jonathan Galka examines the evidence for human reproduction in Space, and what the state of the data tells us about who, according to governments and research establishments, gets imagined as a rightful future inhabitant of Space.

This is the July update to the US State COVID-19 Report Card. The Report Card tracks how US States are reporting socially relevant variables including race/ethnicity, sex, age, and interactions between these variables in COVID cases and outcomes. Our goal is to provide a source of transparent data accountability. The increased reporting of socially relevant variables is critical to understanding health inequities in the COVID-19 pandemic.

How well is your state reporting on socially relevant COVID data? At the most basic level, to understand the nature and extent of COVID outcome disparities, we must have data on gender/sex, age, race/ethnicity, and comorbidity status, and the interactions between them. Here, the GenderSci Lab releases a US State COVID-19 Report Card.