Female applicants have harder time getting grants funded in Netherlands

(credit: Image from San Jose State)

Women earn over half of college graduates in certain countries, yet they continue to be underrepresented in academia, where they face shortfalls in leadership positions, salary, and funding. Of these three issues, funding is particularly important: sufficient funding would make the other gender-based gaps easier to close. A new study in PNAS suggests that this issue isn’t going away, as committees making funding decisions are more likely to decide in favor of male applicants.

The study used data from the Netherlands, tracking early career researchers who had applied for a Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research grant between 2010 and 2012. Though women accounted for approximately 40 percent of the initial applicants, their success rates declined at every step in the review process.

During the time period in question, there were over 3,000 applications submitted, and 16.7 percent secured funding. However, the success rate for female applicants was only 14.9 percent, significantly lower than that of male applicants (17.7 percent).

Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments