Researchers are puzzling over a widespread vitamin B shortage that appears to be killing wildlife.
Image courtesy of Lennart Balk and Per-Åke Hägerroth (Stockholm University, Stockholm).
New Research In
Physical Sciences
Featured Portals
Articles by Topic
Biological Sciences
Featured Portals
Articles by Topic
Edited by Susan T. Fiske, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, and approved August 19, 2015 (received for review May 26, 2015)
Significance
Women remain underrepresented in academia as they continue to face a leadership gap, salary gap, and funding gap. Closing the funding gap is of particular importance, because this may directly retain women in academia and foster the closing of other gaps. In this study, we examined the grant funding rates of a national full population of early career scientists. Our results reveal gender bias favoring male applicants over female applicants in the prioritization of their “quality of researcher” (but not “quality of proposal”) evaluations and success rates, as well as in the language use in instructional and evaluation materials. This work illuminates how and when the funding gap and the subsequent underrepresentation of women in academia are perpetuated.
Abstract
We examined the application and review materials of three calls (n = 2,823) of a prestigious grant for personal research funding in a national full population of early career scientists awarded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). Results showed evidence of gender bias in application evaluations and success rates, as well as in language use in instructions and evaluation sheets. Male applicants received significantly more competitive “quality of researcher” evaluations (but not “quality of proposal” evaluations) and had significantly higher application success rates than female applicants. Gender disparities were most prevalent in scientific disciplines with the highest number of applications and with equal gender distribution among the applicants (i.e., life sciences and social sciences). Moreover, content analyses of the instructional and evaluation materials revealed the use of gendered language favoring male applicants. Overall, our data reveal a 4% “loss” of women during the grant review procedure, and illustrate the perpetuation of the funding gap, which contributes to the underrepresentation of women in academia.
Footnotes
- ↵1To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: ravanderlee{at}fsw.leidenuniv.nl.
↵2Present address: Faculty of Social Sciences, Utrecht University, 3508 TC Utrecht, The Netherlands.
Author contributions: R.v.d.L. and N.E. designed research; R.v.d.L. performed research; R.v.d.L. analyzed data; and R.v.d.L. and N.E. wrote the paper.
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.
*External reviewing is conducted by international experts in the topic and field of the application proposal. Although these experts report their evaluation to the review committee, they are not considered members of the review committee.
†Scientists are allowed to apply twice within the first 3 y after obtaining their PhD. These data were available only for one call, that is, applicants who applied in 2012.
‡Applications were rated on a nine-point Likert scale ranging from 1, “excellent,” to 9, “unsuccessful.” Lower scores thus indicated more favorable evaluations and led to higher prioritization of applicants.
§Applications were evaluated twice by the interview committee, once before the interview and once after the interview. Because these two scores were highly correlated (r > 0.60, P < .001 for all), here we present the average interview evaluation.
**Applicants’ track record data were not available for analysis.
††We did not take into account the written communications containing explicit references to the NWO’s gender policy, resulting in 53 documents coded for gender-exclusive language use.
This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1510159112/-/DCSupplemental.
Gender contributes to grant funding success
More Articles of This Classification
Related Content
Cited by...
- A systematic analysis of UK cancer research funding by gender of primary investigator
- Assessment of potential bias in research grant peer review in Canada
- Perceptions and experiences of a gender gap at a Canadian research institute and potential strategies to mitigate this gap: a sequential mixed-methods study
- A "Scientific Diversity" Intervention to Reduce Gender Bias in a Sample of Life Scientists
- Reply to Volker and Steenbeek: Multiple indicators point toward gender disparities in grant funding success in The Netherlands
- No evidence that gender contributes to personal research funding success in The Netherlands: A reaction to van der Lee and Ellemers
- Reply to Albers: Acceptance of empirical evidence for gender disparities in Dutch research funding
- Dutch research funding, gender bias, and Simpsons paradox
Similar Articles
You May Also be Interested in
Robert Reed explains genetic controls on butterfly wing colors.
Better understanding how the truffles reproduce has major implications for farmers, chefs, and foodies enamored with the expensive, pungent fungus.
Image courtesy of Shutterstock/Vitalina Rybakova.
PNAS QnAs with NAS foreign associate and metabolic engineer Sang Yup Lee
Researchers report a species of early bird with a combination of bird-like and dinosaur-like bone morphologies, and the structure of the bird’s shoulder girdle highlights the role of developmental plasticity in the early evolution of birds, according to the authors.
