The COVID-19 pandemic, with its charge of tragic events and specifically the period of lockdown of March-May 2020, marked our lives by forcing to adopt new rules and new habits. The president of the Italian association “Donne e Scienza” opened a blog (available in English at https://svevaavveduto.wixsite.com/des-covid19?lang=en) where, based on a questionnaire, experiences of people were collected during the lockdown: How did they react? What did they miss most? How has their lifestyle changed and how did they imagine it would change afterwards?

This blog is an interesting collection of fears and wishes, worries and hopes of a heterogeneous sample of respondents, mostly from Italy as well from all over the world; it links them across ages, genders, professions and nationalities. Many women scientists, from “Donne e Scienza” and EPWS –among them the EPWS president- sent their answers. They offered their interesting views of women scientists in various countries about how to coexist with coronavirus and everything it has entailed on a personal and social level. Without pretending to be exhaustive, this narrative collection, in Italian and English, can be considered as a mirror of the personal as well as the social impact of COVID-19 pandemic.

Thanks to CNR, the testimonies were published in the book How are you?, Conversations in the time of Covid 19, Sveva Avveduto (ed.) Rome, CNR press, ISBN paper version 978 88 8080 398 0, electronic version 978 88 8080  399 7 (in preparation).