The investigation of gender-specific biases in the decision-making processes of research funding and in scientific careers is the focus of the Horizon 2020 project GRANteD. On the 19th and 20th of October 2023, the second stakeholder conference took place in Vienna under the direction of Helene Schiffbänker and Michael Ploder from the POLICIES Institute. Initial results were presented to the public and their significance for various stakeholders in the research system was discussed.
The role of research funding organisations
5 research funding organisations (RFOs) were scrutinised. The result: Regional RFMOs play a key role in reducing gender bias in research grant-making and generally contribute to a more equal and equitable scientific ecosystem. These measures are embedded in a broader policy context of each research funding organisation and are linked to the national research intensity and the overall societal importance of gender equality in each country.
Research careers and proposal behaviour
The study also explored how gender-specific inequalities affect research careers and application behaviour. When analysing research careers in science using a large data set of Swedish researchers, GRANteD was able to show that in this case there are no gender-specific differences in the time to professorship when scientific merit and previous achievements are taken into account. In contrast to the Swedish results, however, the analysis of the Dutch data on the careers of researchers showed that women are more likely to end their academic careers earlier and more frequently than their male colleagues.
Further information on the results
- Context, Policies and Practices (Helene Schiffbänker, Liisa Husu)
- Applications, Grants and Research Careers (Florian Holzinger, Peter van den Besselaar)
- GRANteD
