Gender differences in the outcomes of competitive grant programs have been detected, though the evidence is mixed. We modelled twenty years (2000–2020) of Australian national competitive grants and funding amounts according to lead investigator gender. We also explored if gender differences in awarded grants mirrored application rates and/or estimates of research workforce participation by gender. The dataset contained 50,733 awarded grants. We incorporated grant application and research workforce data. We found that fewer awarded grants were led by women than men; however, success rates of grant applications did not vary according to lead investigator gender. There were fewer women than men in the research workforce. The award rate (awarded grants relative to workforce participation) was slightly higher for women than men. All of the observed gender differences were largest at senior-career levels. Gender differences in the number of awarded grants reduced over the period of the study, with the strongest temporal trend amongst senior-career researchers. Gender differences in awarded grants varied by field of research, broadly mirroring differences in application and workforce participation rates within each field of research. Funding amounts per awarded grant did not vary by the gender of the lead investigator. Together these patterns imply that fewer women in the research workforce and leading grant applications have resulted in fewer awarded grants led by women than by men. Given that most awarded grants are to senior-career researchers, and that the largest gender differences exist amongst this cohort, large gender differences in awarded grants accumulate.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.