Fight for the Funds

Female experts hurt careers by avoiding competition

Women need to get in there and fight for it. Research shows that women academics tend to steer clear of competing for important funding, and it might be damaging their chances of promotion.

Shulamit Kahn, an associate professor of markets, public policy & law and a dean’s research fellow, has studied funding differences between men and women when it comes to National Institutes of Health research grants. Previous research has shown that women—and minorities in particular—are underrepresented in academic medicine; winning grants can be instrumental in helping faculty gain tenure.

Kahn found that gender isn’t the most significant factor for receiving the grants, but that women might not be competing as aggressively as men for them in the first place. Kahn was coauthor of a study published in Academic Medicine that found white women actually have a slight advantage over men in receiving these awards.

“Our finding that women submitted fewer proposals is consistent with research showing that women avoid competition,” the researchers wrote. Women of all races and ethnicities submit fewer applications than men; there’s also an increased likelihood that women would only submit one proposal for consideration, instead of sending revisions or several proposals to increase their odds.

Researchers said they found “only limited evidence of a double bind for women of color.” The study concluded that a funding gap for women of color is due to race and ethnicity—not gender. Policies designed to encourage all women to submit revised and additional grant proposals would likely increase the number of grants going to women of color, the study said.