Published on 9 April 2025
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Improving inclusivity in grant funding: initial gender analysis

This initial report of the Improving Inclusivity in Grant Funding project looks at gender disparities and highlights the need for two approaches to address them.

Historically female academics and researchers have encountered challenges in securing research grants. The initial report of the Improving Inclusivity in Grant Funding project focuses on gender disparities at three key stages of the funding process:

  • Who applies?
  • How large are the applications?
  • Who is successful?

To analyse these disparities, we built multi-way Bayesian models, allowing us to account for the academic discipline and the seniority of the principal investigators applying for grants. This refinement is important, as funding opportunities vary across academic fields, and career stage significantly influences grant seeking behaviour and outcomes. Women are underrepresented in senior academic positions and gender distribution differs across schools. Consequently, the University’s professional structure plays a substantial role in shaping application rates, grant sizes, and success rates.

Our findings indicate that many of the observed differences arise because of these seniority and discipline based structural disparities. Our analysis reveals a complex and nuanced relationship between gender and grant-seeking behaviour once these structural factors are compensated for.

This study highlights the need for two approaches to address grant funding disparities. The first is to identify and address the specific factors that contribute to inequalities at different levels of seniority, within each discipline. The second is to focus on broader structural disparities, which this analysis highlights as a critical issue.

The Improving Inclusivity in Grant Funding project aims to investigate current disparities in grant funding outcomes among researchers with varying demographic characteristics, at the University of Cambridge, and identify strategies to mitigate them. We plan to examine other demographic characteristics such as ethnicity and caring responsibilities, as well as structural disparities and interventions.

We thank all of those in the University and beyond who have contributed to, and supported, the work so far.

Authors

Agata Czech

Affiliated Researcher

Agata Czech is a Research Assistant at the University of Cambridge, who combines her passion for using data to inform policy and change, with her background in social sciences to contribute...

Becky Ioppolo

Affiliated Researcher

Becky Ioppolo is an Affiliated Researcher at the Bennett Institute for Public Policy. She is interested in understanding the characteristics of high-performing research environments, particularly in universities. Currently, she is...

Noam Tal-Perry

Noam Tal-Perry

Affiliated Researcher

Noam Tal-Perry is a Research Associate at the Research Strategy Office, University of Cambridge, and a member of the Research on Research Group. He is also an Affiliated Researcher at...

Dr Steven Wooding

Affiliated Researcher

Dr Steven Wooding is Head of Research on Research in the Research Strategy Office at the University of Cambridge, a Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre for Science Policy and...

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