Eligibility criteria

The eligibility criteria are included in table 1. First, we were only interested in articles published from December 2019 to 30 September 2020 (the last day of the literature search). We chose this timeframe to include research related to experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our study specifically focused on the experiences of women in healthcare, encompassing a broad array of health professionals including doctors, nurses, pharmacists, midwives, paramedics, physical therapists, technicians, personnel support workers and community health workers. We only included articles that focused primarily on women in healthcare or that provided a breakdown of data according to sex/gender. Given the transboundary nature of the COVID-19 pandemic, we included articles published globally. We defined occupational stress as the degree to which one feels overwhelmed and unable to cope as a result of unmanageable work-related pressures, and we defined burnout as the experience of emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation or cynicism, along with feelings of diminished personal efficacy or accomplishment in the context of the work environment.¹⁶ We included primary where data were collected and analysed using objective quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods. We excluded editorials and opinion pieces.

Study characteristics