Thread by @purton_louise

Today the Equity in Australian STEMM team sent @nhmrc @ceo_nhmrc & members of NHMRC council our position paper re gendered outcomes in NHMRC funding. We focused our analyses on the 1st 3 yrs of the new scheme, comparing outcomes for Investigator, Ideas & Synergy Grants. 🧵1/20

First, let’s recap the issue. For decades recruitment of women into most Australian STEMM disciplines has not been an issue. More women are in STEMM than men at the PhD & postdoc level👇🏻. Then there’s a sharp drop from lab head level & few women Professors compared to men. 2/20

In 2015-2018 women were awarded 43% of NHMRC fellowships (salary only), most $ going to the early career women, with few mid-career (MCR) & fewer senior women funded. In 2019 these were replaced by Investigator Grants, 5 yr $ also providing salaries of staff & lab expenses.👇🏻3/20

The situation for women has worsened in the new scheme. 37% of the funding has gone to women. In the old scheme there were more women funded at the early levels than men, yet now these women are being “pulled over the line” because they are not being scored high enough 🤷‍♀️ 4/20

There’s also a discrepancy in the outcomes for each of the disciplines as shown here👇🏻. The data for each discipline are not reported separately so we do not know how many applied in ea discipline at each level. It would be great if NHMRC can do this in future, this is impt 5/20

We have previously reported the gender bias that was evident in the outcomes of the L1 (junior level independent lab head) Basic Science discipline. The L1 women received, on average, $488K less than the men. The $ awarded was based on peer review 6/20
womensagenda.com.au/latest/is-aust…

The new scheme means that ppl can only apply for 2 grants/yr max, being 1 x Investigator + 1 x Ideas Grant or 2 x Ideas Grants. We analysed the outcomes of the Ideas Grants hoping that there would be more equity there. There were lower #s of women but equal success rate👇🏻7/20

When we analysed the breakdown by academic level & discipline the results were not dissimilar to the Investigator outcomes, with fewer women funded as seniority increased in Basic Science & Clinical Medicine & few funded in the other 2 disciplines for any gender 👇🏻 8/20

Again, we do not know how many applied in each discipline or at each level, we were only provided with the total # of men, women & gender non-specified applicants & funded ppl. This is important to change to improve transparency & enable more accurate monitoring of data 🤞🏻 9/20

Synergy Grants were better with more women as lead CIs, but these do not provide sufficient $ to support entire labs. In total, the 1st 3 yrs of the new scheme has resulted in $398M more awarded to men in these 3 ppl support $. This is not addressing gender equity goals 10/20

Encouraging more women to apply for funding to achieve equity when there is a depleted pool of MCR & snr women is not the way to achieve gender equity. This has been the theme for yrs. It also highlights a lack of understanding of what is required to achieve gender equity. 11/20

Apologies to non-binary ppl, v few recipients applied/were funded & were in gender non-specified classification because non-binary is not currently an option to tick in the personal profiles. It is very impt to correct this & also impt to collect data for other minorities 12/20

Based on these data, our working group recommend:
1) Allocating = amounts of funding to men & women, with appropriate $ for non-binary ppl
2) Quotas (#s, not %) at ea Investigator Grant level & relative to opportunity enforced (currently L1-3 are assessed/ranked together) 13/20

3) Re-introduction of panels to transparently & equitably discuss applications. These can be done virtually, can provide captions & are accessible for more ppl too (incl those who can’t travel for panel meetings), can be recorded to monitor bias after panels have met 14/20

4) Unconscious (& conscious) bias training to implement fairer grant reviews. There is no difference in the capability of women or non-binary ppl & men to design, perform & conduct exceptional research. There is a huge difference in the way their grants are peer reviewed 15/20

We have offered our assistance to NHMRC to help to improve gender equity, including by advocating for more $ to come into an already underfunded scheme to support retention of women in Australian STEMM. We hope they will accept our offer, we have much experience to offer. 16/20

@ManelWatchAU started a petition to fund women equitably in NHMRC based on our data. Anyone can sign, from any country & you don’t have to be a researcher 👇🏻. To date we have received nearly 7K signatures & this is part of our position paper, 🙏 17/20
change.org/p/fund-women-i…

One of the (abbreviated & anonymised) quotes from our position paper: There is no need to pull women over the funding line. It is psychologically damaging, perpetuates the myth that women are less successful, feeds into their own imposter syndrome & contributes to backlash. 18/20

🙏 to everyone for your support, it has been overwhelming (although unsurprising & from all genders 😊)! A big 🙏 to the others in Equity in Australian STEMM, @jessborger @_KateLawlor @rachaelzmurray @FZMarques @Gianina_Natoli @GaetanBurgio @aidybarnett & James Vince. 19/20

🙏 to all who provided us with quotes for our position paper. We did not have room to include all, we will use them (anonymised) in a publication we are preparing with the NHMRC & ARC data (in 2022, we are all taking a much needed break from advocacy for a while 😊). 20/20

Update: we have heard from @ceo_nhmrc and will be meeting together some time early next year to discuss the position paper. We have also heard from NHMRC council and they will be considering it and discussing it with relevant committee members. 😊