Whither the rising tide?

Factors affecting grant application behaviour

A recently published study of grant application behaviour highlights a number of obstacles inhibiting women from applying for support. Phil Green of the Wellcome Trust Policy Unit investigates.

The awarding of research grants is at the very heart of the academic system. Funders of research, the Wellcome Trust included, know how many applications are received each year and how many are successful. Moreover, in the UK, once an application is received there is no evidence of gender discrimination – award rates are similar for men and women. What is not similar, however, is the number of applications received from men and women – women, in general, apply for fewer research grants.

To try to understand this finding, the Wellcome Trust and the six Research Councils jointly commissioned a study to try to understand why and how researchers apply for grants – in particular, why men are more likely to apply for research funding than women. Have funding agencies inadvertently established barriers in the grant application process? After a competitive tender, the National Centre for Social Research was commissioned to carry out the research, the results of which have recently been published in a report entitled Who Applies for Research Funding? Key factors shaping funding application behaviour among men and women in British higher education institutions which is available from the Wellcome Trust.

The study

The task faced by the National Centre was to identify a sample representing all research disciplines and including both academics who were ineligible to apply for grants and potential applicants. It had to represent the complex mix of universities and it also had to reflect the regional geography of the UK.

A randomly selected sample of higher education institutions were approached and the survey administered to a randomly selected sample of academics. It is perhaps testament to the importance of this issue that 44 out of the 54 institutes approached readily agreed to participate.

The findings from the study (see box below) indicate that many factors influence grant application behaviour. The survey results confirm that women were as successful as men in getting the grants they applied for, but were less likely to apply for grants because of their status in the institution and the support they received. The main influences on grant application behaviour were seniority, employment status, tenure, type of institution, professional profile, institutional support, career breaks and family circumstances. While many factors affect both men and women, some have a disproportionately large impact on women.

The deep-rooted nature of the factors identified by this study suggests that a review of funding bodies’ policies and strategies, as well as higher education employment practices, is required if research funding is ever to be distributed more equitably.

Women and research

Other research published in 2000 has revealed that women academics tend to earn significantly less than their male counterparts and that the number of women in senior academic posts has shown scarcely any increase in recent years. Moreover, this study’s findings are not unique to the UK: a recent report prepared for the European Union shows a similar pattern across Europe.

It is depressing to reflect that six years after the publication of The Rising Tide – a report on women in science, engineering and technology that advised the government on ways to harness the potential, skills and expertise of women – there is still evidence of gender discrimination in higher education. Nevertheless, there are new initiatives that aim to remove some of the barriers highlighted by this report and others.

A key initiative has been the Athena Project, launched in early 1999, which receives core funding from the UK higher education funding and representative bodies and the Department of Trade and Industry. The project’s aim is to encourage women to work in science, engineering and technology disciplines and to advance women’s careers in the higher education sector in these areas. Athena works in partnership with key stakeholder groups and has launched two successful development programmes focusing on institutional culture and personal and career development for women. The kind of work undertaken by Athena will undoubtedly provide useful models for more widespread initiatives in the future.

Another step forward has been the recognition of the need for greater flexibility in the Research Assessment Exercise, which ranks departments according to the quality of their research – particularly the need to make greater allowance for those who are beginning academic careers or have taken career breaks. The proposed requirement for higher education institutions to have staff development plans and equal opportunities statements as a standard requirement for receipt of funding would also emphasise the need to consider the careers of research staff. For their part, funding bodies will need to consider how best they can encourage not only the development of these policies, but also actual good practice.

Key findings
Applications:
50 per cent of women and 59 per cent of men in the sample had applied for responsive mode grants in the past five years.
When women applied for funding, they were as successful as their male colleagues: 51 per cent of female and 50 per cent of male applicants had obtained half or more of the grants they had applied for.
Virtually no gender differences were found in applications for competitively awarded fellowships: 18 per cent of women and 16 per cent of men in the sample had applied for this type of funding.
Eligibility:
Women were less likely than men to be eligible to apply for grants provided by all Research Councils and the Wellcome Trust, except for the Economic and Social Research Council.
Gender variations in terms of eligibility partly reflect women’s over-representation among lower grade academic staff and those with fixed-term contracts.
Influences on grant application activities:
Seniority: 87 per cent of respondents in the most senior jobs (professor, reader and head of department) had applied for grants, compared with around half of other academics. Women were under-represented in these jobs (5 per cent compared with 19 per cent of men); when controlling for seniority, gender differences in grant application activities became much smaller or were reversed.
Employment status: academics in a full-time post were considerably more likely to have applied for research funding than their part-time colleagues (58 and 37 per cent, respectively); women were more likely than men to work part-time (12 and 5 per cent, respectively).
Tenure: those with a tenured academic position were also more likely than academics on a fixed-term contract to have applied for grants (59 and 52 per cent, respectively). Women were more likely than men to have a fixed-term contract (44 and 33 per cent, respectively), but even when controlling for type of contract, gender differences in grant application activities persisted.
Type of institution: 67 per cent of respondents from institutions that are the main recipients of research funding, 62 per cent from other old universities and 39 per cent from new universities and higher education colleges had applied for grants. Within each type of institution, gender differences in grant application behaviour persisted.
Professional profile: women were less likely than men to be involved in a range of high profile academic activities, to have a high publication record and to hold a PhD. These were all important influences on grant application activities.
Institutional support for funding applications: academics who reported a high level of support were considerably more likely to have applied for grants than those who said they had low support (89 and 54 per cent, respectively). Academics in new universities and higher education colleges and women were less likely than others to have reported a high level of support.
Career break: a break from employment for family reasons in the previous ten years has a considerable negative influence on grant application activities – slightly more than a third of those who reported this (almost all women) had applied for grants.
Family circumstances: grant application activities were lower than average among women with dependent children – 50 per cent had applied for grants compared with 62 per cent of men with children.

See also

  • Women and Peer Review: An audit of the Wellcome Trust’s decision making on grants. The Wellcome Trust, 1997.
  • Who Applies for Research Funding? Key factors shaping funding application behaviour among men and women in British higher education institutions. Download a pdf of the summary report or order the full report online

External links

Further reading

Unions renew attack on ‘RAE sex discrimination’. Research Fortnight, 7 June 2000.

Women’s barriers to success. Science and Public Affairs, August 2000.

Science Policies in the European Union. Promoting excellence through mainstreaming gender equality. European Commission, 2000.

The Rising Tide. HMSO, 1994. Order the report online.

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