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. 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
Free PMC article

Gender contributes to personal research funding success in The Netherlands

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

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.

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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.
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