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.
