Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2015 Oct 6;112(40):12349-53.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.1510159112. Epub 2015 Sep 21.

Gender contributes to personal research funding success in The Netherlands

Romy van der Lee  1 , Naomi Ellemers  2
Affiliations

Gender contributes to personal research funding success in The Netherlands

Romy van der Lee et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .

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.

Keywords: STEM; academia; gender bias; research funding; success rates.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Success rates for male and female applicants for each phase in the grant review procedure.
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.
Committee evaluations during the interview phase for male and female applicants for each evaluation criterion.
Fig. S1.
Fig. S1.
Scatterplot with the average committee evaluations of applicants as a function of the share of female reviewers.
Fig. 3.
Fig. 3.
Numbers of applications and grants awarded for men and women for each of the scientific disciplines.
Fig. 4.
Fig. 4.
The occurrence (in %) of gender-inclusive language (“she/he”) and masculine gender-exclusive language (“he”) in instructional and evaluation materials aimed at applicants, committee members, and external reviewers.
Fig. 5.
Fig. 5.
The occurrence of gendered wording in instructional and evaluation materials aimed at applicants, committee members, and external reviewers.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment in

References

    1. Ellemers N. Women at work: How organizational features impact career development. Policy Insights Behav Brain Sci. 2014;1(1):1–9.
    1. Kaatz A, Gutierrez B, Carnes M. Threats to objectivity in peer review: The case of gender. Trends Pharmacol Sci. 2014;35(8):371–373. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Shen H. Inequality quantified: Mind the gender gap. Nature. 2013;495(7439):22–24. - PubMed
    1. Valian V. Why So Slow? The Advancement of Women. MIT Press; Cambridge, MA: 1999.
    1. Crosby FJ, Iyer A, Clayton S, Downing RA. Affirmative action: Psychological data and the policy debates. Am Psychol. 2003;58(2):93–115. - PubMed

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources