A report has recently been published which describes the results of a
survey designed to explore the reasons behind the gender bias in who
applies for research funding in Britain. This follows the studies on
the outcomes of grant applications in Sweden and Britain. It was found
that women in Sweden needed to be 2.5x more productive in terms of
publications than their male colleagues to get the same rating for
scientific competence. The study in Britain showed that women and men
were equally successful in getting grants, once they had applied for
them, but that women were considerably less likely than men to apply for
grants.
The new study asks WHY?
The results can be seen at the Wellcome Trust web site
www.wellcome.ac.uk/publications
Many of the influences are sort of obvious, eg seniority. The major
findings as I see it are (1) that women are often ineligable to apply,
because you need to have a contract that continues beyond the end of the
proposed period of the grant, and women are more likely to be in short
term contracts. The problem is that grant agencies sometimes ignore
this. I am starting to write some more grants, but am ineligable, so
will have a co-applicant. I discussed this with a male colleague who is
also on a short term contract, and is so ineligable. He ignored that,
applied, and got funded anyway. Do we follow the rules too carefully?
(2) Institutional support. Those who reported that they had high levels
of institutional support (how do you quantify this?) were more likely to
apply. Women reported lower levels of institutional support than men.
I can vouch for this one: our department was renovating some labs for
the 3 fly groups; the suite would provide a 'wet' lab for each of us,
and some shared facilities. Two of us wanted new sinks. My male
colleague was sent a catalogue, and told to chose what he wanted, the
sinks were then installed. My lab was delayed due to other building
work. When it got to my turn for the sinks the admistrator wrote to my
colleague and asked him what size sink I wanted! He relied 'ask her'.
The administrator didnt. When I went up to him he told me to get the
catalogue from the surveyors and sort out the installation with the
plumbers! How helpful, he has left now thank goodness.
It's an interesting read, the executive summary gives the main points in
an easily digestable form.
The big question is, as always, how do we get to the senior positions
with long term contracts if we don't have high levels of institutional
support?
Helen
