​​The International Day of Women and Girls in Science was observed on Saturday 11 February. In an opinion piece for News24, Prof Anita Bosch & Dr Georgina Pondayi (Stellenbosch Business School) write that women academics sometimes do not apply for research grants because of the way grant conditions are formulated.

• ​Read the article below or click here for the piece as published.

Anita Bosch & Georgina Pondayi*

The International Day of Women and Girls in Science is observed annually on 11 February to emphasise, among others, the need for gender parity in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). This day also serves as a reminder that despite the progress that has been made, women remain under-represented in these fields.

One issue that needs to be addressed is the uphill battle women academics face when they apply for research grants. Not only are they less likely than men to be awarded such grants, but they are also awarded smaller research grants. 

Funding systems are deemed biased in favour of men, a situation that is compounded by a favouring of male-dominated and culturally masculine positions and fields. Unsurprisingly, men continue to outperform women in obtaining funding through research grants globally, in both STEM and the social sciences.

Research grants are important for women academics to move up the higher education ladder and to establish themselves as leaders in their respective fields. American scholars Rebecca Blanchard, Reva Kleppel and Diana W Bianchi indicated that women early-career grant recipients gain economic, social and cultural capital, which are essential for promotion in a research career. Receiving grant funding is therefore an important indicator of researcher development and impact.

Unfortunately, grant conditions (i.e., rules, the mode, the place of research collaboration and the inclusion and exclusion criteria of grant holders) make it difficult for women researchers to apply for funding. The way grant conditions are formulated may create discomfort in women's self-assessment whether to apply for grants or self-exclude themselves before application.

In our recent study, we attempted to answer the question: how do grant conditions limit women's propensity to apply for research grants?

Using the Open 4 Research database, we selected 270 grants from both the social science and STEM fields for academics with a PhD. We focused specifically on the pre-application phase as this is the phase that is invisible to grant funders and grant reviewers. This is also the phase where women researchers may decide to exclude themselves from the application process. Viewing the grant conditions through a feminist lens with the elements of difference, care, time and choice, enabled us to uncover several issues that may impede women to seriously consider applying for grants.

We found that grant conditions are formulated in a gender-neutral manner. On the face of it, gender neutrality is a safe way of stating conditions, as every grant applicant is provided with the same conditions – thereby eliminating any alleged unfair treatment.

But this gender neutrality can be deceiving.

For example, when the element of difference between women and men is acknowledged, the gender neutrality argument becomes less egalitarian and more exclusionary. Women's career cycles are different from men's, amongst others, because women may need to take a career break to have children and care for them full-time while they are babies. This alters their career trajectories and career life cycles. Given the purported neutrality in the grant conditions analysed, women are regarded the same as men, and there is no opportunity to acknowledge difference.

When considering that many research grants state a term of up to eight years and require the researcher to conduct fieldwork up to 50% of the time, coupled with staff exchange programmes, the conflict women face in terms of fertility and care becomes glaringly obvious. These requirements become particularly onerous for women who then have to conduct research far away from home without grants providing for childcare support or family travel arrangements. Three social science grants indicated a travel stipend but did not specify that it may be used to visit home, and only one grant noted that the organisation was willing to pay a 'mobility allowance', together with provision for 'family- and long-term leave'.

In addition, women of all ages tend to have care responsibilities within the family. It is thus clear that gender neutrality in grants (i.e., compliance with equality numbers) will not result in equity for women researchers. Their realities (career life cycle, reproductive life cycle and care commitments) may lead to self-exclusion, resulting in their underrepresentation in applying of research grant funding.

There are also several issues involved in the layering of time in grant conditions, for example, age cut-offs and time since completion of a PhD. Given the low numbers of grants that move beyond gender-neutrality, it remains disappointing that only four grants out of the 270 that we analysed consider career breaks in continuity in respect to time since completion of a PhD.

When considering the pre-application phase of research grants, given the inflexibility of most grants regarding care work, women could make an assessment that the grant will not make provision for their lived realities. As a result, they may not apply. Grant funders who design and award grants should consider whether age cut-offs are necessary, as well as how restrictive these should be.

When it comes to choice, it appears that women may not be at liberty to choose as freely as is assumed to apply for research grants, as they may feel confined by caregiving responsibilities associated with societal norms. The grant conditions of most of the funders in our dataset did not acknowledge women's realities. Our analysis of grants from disciplines dominated by women (i.e., social sciences) contradicts the assumption that grant conditions are shaped around the characteristics of the majority researchers in a discipline. Instead, grant conditions in both STEM and social sciences remain gender-neutral.

We also found that the STEM fields' cut-off points are earlier than those of the social sciences, which is not conducive to attracting more women when considering the compound effect of the other factors women have to bear in mind. While aligned to the career path dominated by men, it may create severe restrictions for women who must balance the right grant at the right time with all the factors related to their age and thus their career life cycle and reproduction.

Our study showed that grant conditions can shape women researchers' propensity to deselect themselves. Therefore, grant funders should address the issues that prevent women academics from applying for funding by differently shaping grant conditions to meet their needs. We are convinced that parity in the numbers of women and men researchers can be achieved as there are enough qualified women in most major fields of study.

*Prof Anita Bosch holds the Research Chair for Women at Work at Stellenbosch Business School in the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences at Stellenbosch University. Dr Georgina Pondayi was a postdoctoral fellow at Stellenbosch Business School. This article is based, in part, on their recent academic paper in the Journal for Transdisciplinary Research in Southern Africa.

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