Gender differences in grant peer review: A meta-analysis

Bornmann, Lutz; Mutz, Ruediger; Daniel, Hans‐Dieter

doi:10.1016/j.joi.2007.03.001

Cited by 259 publications

(214 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…However, this does not imply that female dendrochronologists do not experience other types of gender bias and we do not intend to belittle the challenges that women dendrochronologists have overcome to gain the same level of recognition of their research as their male counterparts. If anything we laud the efforts of women researchers who overcome well-documented biases in hiring processes (Levin et al 2005;Schmader et al 2007), promotion decisions (Carr et al 2003;Heilman and Okimoto 2008), tenure decisions (Luzzadder-Beach and Macfarlane 2000), and grant awarding (Bornmann and Daniel 2005;Bornmann et al 2007) to achieve the same level of success as their male counterparts. …”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lack of Gender Bias in Citation Rates of Publications by Dendrochronologists: What is Unique about this Discipline?

2010

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Most academic disciplines have a gender bias that exists in the recognition of research publications: women's publications are cited at lower rates than men's publications. In this paper, we examined whether a similar gender bias existed for publications by dendrochronologists. Tree-ring research is a fairly small field where males outnumber females, and therefore the sample size was limited to 20 female dendrochronologists and 20 male dendrochronologists. It was determined that native language (English or non-native English speaker), current employment (government or academic), and gender of the first-author do not significantly influence a paper's probability of being cited. However, years since dissertation completion was a good predictor of a paper's citation rate. We suggest that the high productivity of female dendrochronologists and a pattern of co-authoring with male colleagues bring the work of females to the attention of their male colleagues and thus eliminate the gender bias in citation of women's work common to other disciplines.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lack of Gender Bias in Citation Rates of Publications by Dendrochronologists: What is Unique about this Discipline?

2010

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“…Although direct comparisons of funding rates of scientific agencies are rather difficult due to variations in grant types and review procedures (36), at least one feature of the review procedure seems particularly prone to gender bias: researchers' track records. In our data as well as in the ERC Starting Grant review procedure, an important evaluation criterion is the "scientific excellence of the researcher."…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender contributes to personal research funding success in The Netherlands

Lee

Ellemers

2015

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

230

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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.gender bias | research funding | success rates | academia | STEM W omen are still underrepresented in academia today. Despite various attempts to promote gender equality (e.g., affirmative action initiatives, quotas), female scientists are less likely to get offered tenure, are judged to be less competent, receive less payment and research facilities, and are less likely to be awarded research grants compared with male scientists (1-3). Over time, this type of bias accumulates and contributes to the attrition of women from academia (4); the academic pipeline leaks. Here we report evidence of gender bias in personal research funding for early career scientists.The importance of equal gender representation is widely acknowledged, for several reasons. First, it can resolve historic inequalities and provide equal opportunities (the "moral case for diversity") (5, 6). Second, research has demonstrated that gender diversity in organizations can boost innovation and creativity, expand target groups, and increase productivity (the "business case for diversity") (7, 8), either directly or indirectly through decision making processes or reputation, and provided that the organizational culture is open to change (9-12). This is true for academia as well. Gender-diverse research teams facilitate innovation and excellence in research and policy, address different research questions and methods, and facilitate wider application of research findings (13), thereby contributing to scientific progress.Relevant statistics, however, show a persistent leadership gap, salary gap, and funding gap for women in academia (3). To illustrate, The Netherlands-generally considered a high-equity nationhad only 16% female full professors in 2012 (14). Leadership is stereotyped as masculine and consequently associated more strongly with stereotypical male traits rather than female traits. Although women a...

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“…Concerning grant peer reviewing, one of the most frequently cited studies on gender bias, that carried out by Wennerås and Wold (1997), demonstrated that female applicants for postdoctoral fellowships at the Swedish Medical Research Council had to be 2.5 times more productive than the average male applicant in order to obtain the same peer-review rating for scientific competence. Since then, an evergrowing body of academic research has found no conclusive evidence of sex discrimination in the awarding of specific project grants (Wellcome Trust 1997;Ward and Donnelly 1998;Bornmann et al 2007;Marsh et al 2008). In this regard, the meta-analyses conducted by Bornmann et al (2007) and Marsh et al (2009), and more recently the study by Mutz et al (2012), have all concluded that there is negligible evidence of gender bias in grant awarding programs.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Research on women in science and higher education: a bibliometric analysis

2015

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The main objective of this paper is to study the development and growth of scientific literature on women in science and higher education. A total of 1415 articles and reviews published between 1991 and 2012 were extracted from the Thomson Reuters Web of Science database. Standard bibliometric indicators and laws (e.g. Price's, Lotka's, and Bradford's laws) were applied to these data. In addition, the Gender Inequality Index (GII) was obtained for each country in order to rank them. The results suggest an upward trend not only in the number of papers but also in the number of authors per paper. However, this increase in the number of authors was not accompanied by greater international collaboration. The interest in gender differences in science extends too many authors (n = 3064), countries (n = 67), and research areas (n = 86). Data showed a high dispersion of the literature and a small set of core journals focused on the topic. Regarding the research areas, the area with the highest frequency of papers was Education and Educational Research. Finally, our results showed that countries with higher levels of inequality (higher GII values) tend to present higher relative values of scientific productivity in the field.

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Gender differences in grant peer review: A meta-analysis

Cited by 259 publications

References 26 publications

Lack of Gender Bias in Citation Rates of Publications by Dendrochronologists: What is Unique about this Discipline?

Lack of Gender Bias in Citation Rates of Publications by Dendrochronologists: What is Unique about this Discipline?

Gender contributes to personal research funding success in The Netherlands

Research on women in science and higher education: a bibliometric analysis

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