When we were reporting on the superb epidemiologists who have become household names because of their role as public communicators in the coronavirus response, we struggled to find women in that very specific role. We looked hard in Europe, where our story is set. #thread

The people we were looking for were experts drawn from the scientific community & promoted by governments into the role of public communicator on the crisis. In the many countries we researched, all of those outstanding individuals & experts turned out to be men.

We can speculate why. There are thousands of women epidemiologists. Perhaps, as in many sciences, they are fewer than men. Perhaps they are younger, having broken that glass ceiling recently, meaning they're not as established. Perhaps European public policy is dominated by men.

So as we went about reporting this story, I found it striking no 1 named a woman as THE public face of the corona response in their country. If I overlooked someone, pls tweet me and I'll RT. I'll take criticism for it, but wanted to let u know, it wasn't for lack of effort.

I'll keep looking for those women, and I think it's important that the incredibly important, socially soothing, very public & scientific role played by these experts is a story worth telling. Thanks for thoughts & for reading. Here's our story: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/05/world/europe/scientists-coronavirus-heroes.html?action=click&module=News&pgtype=Homepage