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To support rigorous research, GATE offers annual research grants to qualified applicants.

2023-2024 grant recipients.

Gender Differences in Job Application Strategies: An Experimental Investigation

The Promise of Ranked-Choice Voting: Can It Improve Diversity?

Gendered Patterns in the Language that Experts Use in their Endorsements

The Impact of Registered Indian Status: Evidence from Bill C-31

The Effect of Federal Fair Lending Regulations on Sexual Orientation Discrimination in the Mortgage Market

Revolutionary Care: Technology Use in Precarious Care Work

Gender-Based Price Discrimination: An Antitrust Concern?

Where Does Creativity Come From? How the Gendered Nature of Creativity Beliefs Impacts Organizational Recruiting

Quantifying and Understanding Gender Disadvantages in Reactions to Incorrect Teaching

Female Economic Immigrants Driven Out of Japan Due to Gender Inequality: Exploring their Economic Integration in Canada

How Marginalized Actors Develop New Market Strategies After Institutional Reform

Regulating Biases: The Impact of Anti-Discriminating Policies on Firms

Gender Inequality and Household Purchase Decisions: The Case of Automobiles in China

2022-2023 Grant Recipients

Gender Differences in Accusations and Believability

Promoting Economic Inclusion among Racialized Migrant Women

Gender Discrimination in Remote and On-Site Work: A Survey of Managers’ Perceptions

Strengthening the investment case for action on gender-based violence and child maltreatment in Canada

2021-2022 Grant Recipients

Read about their research in VoxDev .

Beverley Essue, Felicia Knaul, Nata Duvvury, & Michelle Remme

2020-2021 Grant Recipients

Read Rie's paper in International Journal of STEM Education .

Read gate's brief on rie's research., learn more in this article on biomed central ..

2019-2020 Grant Recipients

Read their paper in Cognitive Science .

Read András' paper in American Sociological Review .

Read gate's research brief on andrás' research., 2018-2019 grant recipients.

Salary disclosure laws and the gender wage gap

Read their paper in American Economic Journal .

Learn more about this research in harvard business review ..

Choice architecture and women’s leadership ascension

Read their paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences .

Read gate's research brief of their paper., learn more about joyce, sonia, and nico's research in voxeu..

Read their latest working paper.

Read their paper in Journal of Business Ethics .

Read their paper in Labour Economics .

Read gate's research brief on their paper..

View a short film based on their research here.

2017-2018 grant recipients.

Impact on the gender pay gap of CEO exposure to gender imbalance during formative years

Read Mikhail's publication in The Review of Financial Studies .

Watch mikhail discuss his research at the rotman magazine event, "art of change.".

Scaling Up Gender Equality (how different ratings scales shape outcomes by gender)

Winner, American Sociological Association Granovetter Award for best article in economic sociology.

Learn more about András' research in this article for Harvard Business Review.

Read gate's research brief on andrás' paper..

Race, Gender and Agency in Leadership: An Examination of Intersectional Identities and Agentic Penalties

Adding More Women to Corporate Boards: The Impact on Boards’ Advisory Effectiveness

Read Daehyun's paper in American Economic Review .

Read an interview about this research in forbes india ..

Playing the Inside Game versus the Outside Offer Game: How Men and Women Respond to Workplace Successes and Failures May Drive the Gender Pay Gap

Shifting Stereotypes to Improve Leadership Aspiration and Self‐Efficacy among Female Leaders

Read their paper in Academy of Management .

Learn more about this research in ucla anderson review ..

Barriers to Reporting Sexual Harassment and Assault

Gender and Awards in Financial Industries

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Since its launch in 2016, GATE has funded 61 researchers investigating topics such as the impact of CEO characteristics on the corporate gender gap, barriers to reporting sexual harassment and assault, increasing the number of girls and women pursuing STEM careers, and the double-bind that women face in entering the job market and advancing in their careers.

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An important part of the Center’s mission is to serve as a resource for funding in women's health, sex, and gender differences research.

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The Johns Hopkins Sex and Age Differences in Immunity to Influenza (SADII) is part of the Specialized Centers of Research Excellence (SCORE) on Sex Differences program , a signature program of the NIH Office of Research on Women’s Health(ORWH).

BIRCWH Funding for Johns Hopkins Junior Faculty

The Johns Hopkins Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women’s Health (JH-BIRCWH) was established to develop highly qualified, independent investigators to conduct women’s health and sex and gender differences research. Meet our BIRCHW scholars and explore their work.

Funding is available only to full-time junior faculty scholars from within Johns Hopkins University, with priority given to investigators from groups underrepresented in research.

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Research Webnotes: External and Internal Funding and Prizes

Gender Disparity in the Funding of Diseases by the U.S. National Institutes of Health

Affiliation.

1 Independent Researcher, Castro Valley, California, USA.
PMID: 33232627
PMCID: PMC8290307
DOI: 10.1089/jwh.2020.8682

Background: Gender bias has been an ongoing issue in health care, examples being underrepresentation of women in health studies, trivialization of women's physical complaints, and discrimination in the awarding of research grants. We examine here a different issue-gender disparity when it comes to the allocation of research funding among diseases. Materials and Methods: We perform an analysis of funding by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) to ascertain possible gender disparity in its allocation of funds across diseases. We normalize funding level to disease burden, as measured by the Disability Adjusted Life Year, and we specifically consider diseases for which both disease burden and funding level are provided. We apply a power-law regression analysis to model funding commensurate with disease burden. Results: We find that in nearly three-quarters of the cases where a disease afflicts primarily one gender, the funding pattern favors males, in that either the disease affects more women and is underfunded (with respect to burden), or the disease affects more men and is overfunded. Moreover, the disparity between actual funding and that which is commensurate with burden is nearly twice as large for diseases that favor males versus those that favor females. A chi-square test yields a p -value of 0.015, suggesting that our conclusions are representative of the full NIH disease portfolio. Conclusions: NIH applies a disproportionate share of its resources to diseases that affect primarily men, at the expense of those that affect primarily women.

Keywords: National Institutes of Health; gender disparity; research funding for diseases.

Biomedical Research*
Cost of Illness
National Institutes of Health (U.S.)
Quality-Adjusted Life Years
United States

Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University

Policy Careers May 2, 2019

How big is the gender gap in science research funding, two new studies look at who wins the prestigious grants and prizes that can make or break a scientist’s career..

Diego FM Oliveira

Teresa Woodruff

Women are entering the biomedical sciences in record rates. But what happens to these female doctors and scientists once they’re established in their careers? Do they receive the same support as their male colleagues?

In several key ways, according to new research, they don’t. Women biomedical researchers receive less grant funding from the National Institute of Health (NIH) and less prize money when they win scientific awards. That’s the conclusion from two related papers from Brian Uzzi , a professor of management and organizations at the Kellogg School, and Teresa K. Woodruff , a professor at Northwestern’s Fienberg School of Medicine and Northwestern’s associate provost for graduate education. These findings may not surprise anyone familiar with the overall gender wage gap. But Woodruff says it was important to quantify the disparity. “Having the data allows us to understand root causes and allows us to understand intervention,” she says.

The sobering results may also help explain why women are still underrepresented in top scientific positions—despite earning PhDs at historically high levels. Women researchers are at a fiscal disadvantage, Woodruff says, “from the very beginning, from the very first grant.” That, in turn, may limit their ability to do the cutting-edge research that would allow them to advance. Uzzi agrees. The study on prize money, he says, shows another way that women don’t receive “equal recognition for their contributions. That tends to lower motivation, and it tends to have women look to other fields where their contributions will be better acknowledged and better rewarded.”

Measuring the Funding Gender Gap

Grants are the lifeblood of biomedical research, and there is no more important funding source than the NIH, which invests nearly $40 billion each year . The first grant that scientists receive from the federal agency can help start their career on the right track. That’s why Woodruff and Uzzi, along with and Yifang Ma, a postdoctoral fellow at the Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems , and Diego F. M. Oliveira, a scientist at the Army Research Lab, decided to analyze NIH grants to first-time principal investigators (PIs), who are the lead researchers on a project. After analyzing more than 53,000 grants awarded between 2006 and 2017, they found that the median grant size for first-time female PIs was $126,615. That’s a striking 24 percent less than the $165,721 awarded to first-time male PIs.

“What’s important to me is that we continue to develop the strategies that will ensure that tomorrow’s female faculty succeeds more easily than my generation.” —Teresa Woodruff

The team still isn’t sure why the disparity exists. As part of their study they examined potentially confounding factors such as the quantity of papers the researchers had published, citations their papers received, and topics the researchers studied. But there was no systemic difference in those numbers that could explain why first-time female PIs ultimately got smaller grants. They also analyzed Big Ten and Ivy League universities separately, thinking that institutional prestige or school-specific factors, like grant-application advice or overhead charges, could affect levels of grant funding. In both instances, they still found a significant gender disparity—a median difference in grants between men and women of $81,711 at Big Ten schools and $19,513 in the Ivy League, with some schools showing no differences and other schools showing differences of up to 66 percent. Restricting the analysis to men and women applying for the same grant, which controlled for grant budget and length, also showed that the discrepancies by gender persisted on average—although like the analysis at the institutional level, the difference in funding amounts was concentrated in certain grants. Woodruff says the team is trying to get to the bottom of the issue. They are examining the possibility that women are simply asking for less, although she doesn’t think that’s likely. It could be that women aren’t getting the right kind of support from their home institutions—such as lab space—that would make for a more compelling grant application. Unconscious bias at the NIH could also be to blame.

Whatever the reason, it’s essential that it be addressed so that women and men can move through their career on equal footing. Now that scientists know about the funding disparity, “we’re all going to be able to look at our own areas and see what we can come up with as ways to intervene,” Woodruff says.

Prize Money: Even When Women Win, They Lose

Unfortunately, funding disparities don’t go away as women advance in their career. This was the takeaway from Uzzi and Woodruff’s second study, which focused on prize money that biomedical researchers receive for industry awards. This line of research was sparked by some online book browsing. Uzzi, a fan of mixed martial arts, stumbled across a book called Prize Fights on Amazon, only to discover it was actually about research prizes. “That’s how it happens sometimes in science,” he says. Prizes are the “coin of the realm in science in terms of recognition for your work,” he says. “Deans and promotion committees all pay attention to the kind of prizes you have, because they really highlight and draw awareness to the quality of your work.” The team collected data on 628 prizes awarded in the biomedical sciences from 1968 to 2017. These included prominent prizes for research, as well as prizes for professional service, such as teaching and mentoring.

There were some encouraging results: between 2007 and 2017, women won 27 percent of prizes. This is a major improvement from 1968 to 1977, when women received just 5 percent of prizes, and is about what you’d expect, given that 31 percent of papers in the field have at least one female author. But even when women win prizes, they lose. That’s because women do not tend to win the most prestigious and lucrative prizes, the group found. In fact, women made up just 14.6 percent of winners of the top five percent of prizes.

Overall, women won an average of 64.4 cents of the prize money for every dollar men received. If you exclude the most and least lucrative prizes to avoid outliers, the picture looks even bleaker: on average, women receive just 60.2 cents for every dollar men win. That amount, Uzzi says, could make the difference between “a thriving lab or a lab that is always choked for money,” since researchers often funnel prize money into their labs, and the prestige of a prize can attract other funding, as well.

“Deans and promotion committees all pay attention to the kind of prizes you have.” —Brian Uzzi

Interestingly, women are winning more service prizes than men, the analysis found. But these prizes, which are awarded for things such as working on committees or mentoring students, while critical to science, are both less remunerative and less highly regarded than research prizes. That suggests female scientists are doing more than their fair share of service, and perhaps paying a price for it. “If you’re spending your time doing a lot of service, it drains time away that you would spend on your research,” Uzzi says.

From Research to Intervention

Now that they have named and quantified the scale of the problem, Uzzi and Woodruff hope to identify solutions. And they aren’t alone. They’ve already heard from a member of the Nobel Prize committee who wanted to know how they could change their nomination process so that more women are in contention. For its part, the NIH issued a statement that said it’s “aware and concerned” about the disparity in funding between men and women researchers. “What’s important to me is that we continue to develop the strategies that will ensure that tomorrow’s female faculty succeeds more easily than my generation,” Woodruff says. “If we can put into place [a system] that allows my students who are now becoming faculty to actually have a fair shake at the economics that allow us to make the discoveries that are necessary to all of our lives, then we will have done a good thing.”

Richard L. Thomas Professor of Leadership and Organizational Change; Professor of Management and Organizations

About the Writer Susie Allen is a freelance writer in Chicago.

About the Research Uzzi, Brian, Diego FM Oliveira, Yifang Ma, and Teresa Woodruff. 2019. “Comparison of National Institutes of Health Grant Amounts to First-Time Male and Female Principal Investigators.” Journal of the American Medical Association. 321(9): 898–900. Ma, Yifang, Teresa Woodruff, and Brian Uzzi. 2019. “Women Who Win Prizes Get Less Money and Prestige." Nature. 565: 287–288.

Fund for Gender Equality

The Fund for Gender Equality (FGE) has one guiding purpose: to support national, women-led civil society organizations in achieving women’s economic and political empowerment and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

An instrument for feminist philanthropy based on principles of accessibility, trust, and women’s ownership, the Fund is a unique global grant-making model . It transforms financing from diverse donors into high-impact initiatives by women-led organizations, investing in their ideas and abilities to pursue interventions closely attuned to women and girls left furthest behind —97 per cent of its projects working with at least one category of vulnerable groups, and 70 per cent involving two or more.

Since its creation in 2009, the Fund has strengthened the capacities of 131 organizations and delivered USD 65 million in grants to 121 projects in 80 countries. Projects have directly improved the lives of 570,000 people and benefitted millions more through lasting changes to public policy.

To maintain the highest standards of quality and impact, the Fund constantly learns from past experiences while looking ahead and exploring new ways of working . With select grantees, it is currently experimenting with alternative grant-making approaches involving upscaling and social innovation .

In this section

Featured publication

Fund for Gender Equality annual report 2018–2019 Supported by photos, data, infographics, and individual stories of impact, UN Women's Fund for Gender Equality (FGE) annual report presents main aggregated results achieved by its 25 active projects. It highlights the process and outcomes of its fourth grant-making cycle, 2018–2019, a scaling and innovation initiative. The report also features FGE’s South-South and triangular cooperation strategy, a few impact news from past projects, and two grantee partners’ op-eds. More

Gender differences in peer reviewed grant applications, awards, and amounts: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Karen B. Schmaling 1 &
Stephen A. Gallo 2

Research Integrity and Peer Review volume 8 , Article number: 2 ( 2023 ) Cite this article

4145 Accesses

5 Citations

174 Altmetric

Metrics details

Differential participation and success in grant applications may contribute to women’s lesser representation in the sciences. This study’s objective was to conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis to address the question of gender differences in grant award acceptance rates and reapplication award acceptance rates (potential bias in peer review outcomes) and other grant outcomes.

The review was registered on PROSPERO (CRD42021232153) and conducted in accordance with PRISMA 2020 standards. We searched Academic Search Complete, PubMed, and Web of Science for the timeframe 1 January 2005 to 31 December 2020, and forward and backward citations. Studies were included that reported data, by gender, on any of the following: grant applications or reapplications, awards, award amounts, award acceptance rates, or reapplication award acceptance rates. Studies that duplicated data reported in another study were excluded. Gender differences were investigated by meta-analyses and generalized linear mixed models. Doi plots and LFK indices were used to assess reporting bias.

The searches identified 199 records, of which 13 were eligible. An additional 42 sources from forward and backward searches were eligible, for a total of 55 sources with data on one or more outcomes. The data from these studies ranged from 1975 to 2020: 49 sources were published papers and six were funders’ reports (the latter were identified by forwards and backwards searches). Twenty-nine studies reported person-level data, 25 reported application-level data, and one study reported both: person-level data were used in analyses. Award acceptance rates were 1% higher for men, which was not significantly different from women (95% CI 3% more for men to 1% more for women, k = 36, n = 303,795 awards and 1,277,442 applications, I 2 = 84%). Reapplication award acceptance rates were significantly higher for men (9%, 95% CI 18% to 1%, k = 7, n = 7319 applications and 3324 awards, I 2 = 63%). Women received smaller award amounts ( g = -2.28, 95% CI -4.92 to 0.36, k = 13, n = 212,935, I 2 = 100%).

Conclusions

The proportions of women that applied for grants, re-applied, accepted awards, and accepted awards after reapplication were less than the proportion of eligible women. However, the award acceptance rate was similar for women and men, implying no gender bias in this peer reviewed grant outcome. Women received smaller awards and fewer awards after re-applying, which may negatively affect continued scientific productivity. Greater transparency is needed to monitor and verify these data globally.

Peer Review reports

Funding is needed to conduct most research and is key to scientists’ success. For example, extramural funding was among the criteria for tenure and promotion in the majority of a random sample of 92 biomedical sciences faculties, selected from among the top 852 universities in the world based on publication productivity [ 1 ]. Funded applications reflect positive evaluations of the significance and proposed methods of the research, and of the expertise of the investigator.

Around the world, women comprise an estimated 29.3% of researchers, which varies by country [ 2 ]. Women are underrepresented among researchers: in the United States (US), for example, women comprised 35.2% of doctorates in science, engineering, and health, but only 29.8% – a gap of 5.5% –was substantially engaged in research in 2017 [ 3 ]. Concerns about women’s underrepresentation in the sciences have focused on the leaky pipeline, unsupportive environments, and lack of mentoring, among other factors [ 4 ]. Biased evaluations, including peer reviewed grant applications, have been posited as another potential cause for differential success in the sciences [ 4 ]. Biases may be explicit or implicit, as reflected in overt discrimination or in automatic preferences, respectively. Men are more strongly associated with science than are women; this robust implicit bias effect has been replicated in 60 countries [ 5 ] and among STEM faculty at highly ranked universities in the US [ 6 ]. It seems plausible that biases and preferences may affect grant application and review processes, resulting in gender differences.

Evidence of gender bias in peer review has been inconsistent. Some narrative reviews have concluded that there is no evidence for gender bias in grant peer review [ 7 , 8 ]. Other narrative reviews provide a mixed picture. For example, men have been observed to apply for grants more than women, but the proportions of successful applicants are similar [ 9 ]. Another review cited studies that showed both gender differences and lack of differences in grant applications outcomes [ 10 ], which are sensitive to context [ 11 ].

Quantitative reviews have been rare. Two studies used different analytic methods to examine a dataset comprised of 66 gender comparisons from 21 studies that spanned the years 1987–2005 [ 12 , 13 ]. The earlier study compared odds ratios of applications and awards among women to those among men. They found that men were 7% more likely to receive an award than women, which was statistically significant, albeit associated with a small effect size [ 12 ]. The later study used more complex multilevel analyses that controlled for discipline, country, and year, and did not find significant gender differences [ 13 ].

Moderating variables, such as the nations studied, have contributed to an inconsistent literature on the association between gender and grant outcomes [ 11 , 13 ]. Recent gender equity efforts in the EU include a mandate that “gender… (is) a ranking criterion for proposals with the same score” [ 14 ], which may result in better gender parity than in nations without such laws, including the United States (US).

The purpose of this study was to conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis of the literature since 2005 regarding gender differences in grant outcomes by conducting meta-analyses and mixed models of each outcome. This study addressed the question of gender differences in grant applications, awards, award acceptance rates, award amounts, and reapplication award acceptance rates. We also examined nation (US vs. non-US) as a potential moderator of gender differences [ 11 , 13 ].

The review was conducted in accordance with PRISMA 2020 standards [ 15 ].

Protocol registration

The study protocol was submitted to PROSPERO on 19 January 2021 and was registered on 19 February 2021 (#CRD42021232153). This paper differs from the registered protocol as follows: the protocol did not list all of the measures of effect for each outcome measure; two of the proposed subgroup analyses (the type/level of grant mechanism and the gender of the study authors) could not be addressed in the scope of this paper.

Search strategy and study identification

Three search engines were chosen to provide comprehensive coverage of the literature after consultation with an academic librarian: Academic Search Complete, PubMed, and Web of Science. The keywords used were “peer review” AND grant AND gender; the range of publication dates was 1 January 2005 to 31 December 2020; languages were English or French. The searches were last performed on 2 February 2021. The beginning date was chosen based on the most recent year in the previous quantitative reviews [ 12 , 13 ].

Three people independently searched each database in January 2021 and compared the number of results. There was perfect agreement on the number of results from each search on each database. Next, two people independently screened the abstracts identified by each search and judged if each abstract clearly met or did not meet inclusion criteria.

The full text article of each possibly relevant manuscript was obtained and independently reviewed by two people to determine if it met inclusion criteria. The results of the three searches and the decision to include or exclude each study were combined and duplicate studies were eliminated. Relevant data (see below) were extracted by one person; all extracted data were checked by a second person. For articles in which incomplete data were reported, up to three emails were sent to corresponding authors to request additional data.

Additional relevant articles were found based on forward and backward searches of the articles identified through the systematic review. The reference lists of articles that met inclusion criteria were reviewed for earlier possibly relevant articles. Each search engine was used to identify later possibly relevant publications that had cited articles that met inclusion criteria.

Inclusion and exclusion criteria

To be included, the study needed to report data on numbers of peer reviewed grant applications, awards, or reapplications, or amounts of funding (mean or median and standard deviation or interquartile range) separately by gender. Studies were excluded that reported none of these variables, if the data had been reported in the previous review [ 12 , 13 ], or if the data in the study were superseded by a more comprehensive report. The last inclusion criterion was intended to identify independent, nonduplicated data sources: for example, a report of R-type applications by men and women otolaryngologists to the NIH in 2015 would be superseded by data from all NIH institutes regarding R-type applications from 2005–2020. If a report contained both unique data not included in another report and data superseded by another report, only the unique data were retained.

Extracted variables

Characteristics of the included studies were extracted including the country, type or name of the granting agencies, years studied, data source (data extracted from archives or obtained through survey), characteristics of the participants, if participants were referred to by sex (female, male) or gender (women, men) based on biological or socially-defined characteristics, respectively, grant type or mechanism, data on eligible populations (as included in the study or obtained through searching for data that reflected study characteristics including country, year, disciplines, and sector, e.g., higher education), and presence or absence of each outcome variable and the level of data reporting (person-level, application-level, or both). Finally, each study’s assessment of gender bias was extracted, noting if there was a conclusion that there was bias (or similar phrases including difference, gap, disparity, discrepancy, was inequitable, etc.), was no bias, the results were mixed or equivocal, or did not make this determination (i.e., only reported data), accompanied by a quotation from the article supporting the assessment.

Extracted outcome variables, by gender, were the number of grant applications, number of awards, award acceptance rate (awards divided by applications), amounts of awards, number of reapplications, number of awards after reapplication, and reapplication award acceptance rate. Proportions of applications, awards, reapplications, and awards after reapplications were calculated by the number for women divided by the total for men and women. For studies that reported more than one data source, data from each was extracted and preserved on a separate row. Reapplications and resubmissions were of two types: competitive renewals (e.g., a competitive renewal application following an R01 award) or resubmissions following unfunded applications. Award amounts were standardized by first converting the original currency to 2021 values using on-line calculators (see the Supplementary file eMethods ) and then converting to US$ using Google’s on-line currency converter. For studies that reported award amounts’ medians and interquartile ranges, a macro estimated means and standard deviations (see the Supplementary file eMethods ). Pre-specified moderator variables were extracted: the country in which the study was conducted (US or non-US).

The authors extracted and checked all data; disagreements were resolved by discussion.

Data analysis

Datasets and analysis syntax are available on the project website. Descriptive statistics were calculated for each outcome variable, by gender. MetaXL version 5.3 [ 16 ] was used for the meta-analyses of gender differences using the raw (unweighted) data and compared subgroups of US versus non-US studies when 10 or more studies were available. Inverse variance heterogeneity models were used because of methodological diversity [ 17 ]. Forest plots were used to depict the effect size and 95% confidence interval (CI) of each study, grouped by US and non-US studies. Separate meta-analyses of gender differences were calculated for each outcome variable using the following effect sizes: award acceptance rates and reapplication award acceptance rates used rate differences; award amounts used Hedges’ g ; and analyses of proportions (applications, awards, reapplications) used double arcsine transformed prevalence [ 18 ]. Sensitivity analyses were performed by excluding each study in turn [ 19 ] (see the Supplementary file eResults ).

The dispersion of effect sizes was quantified with Q and I 2 statistics. Doi plots and the LFK index were used to assess reporting bias [ 20 ]. Doi plots graph the effect on the x axis and the Z -score of the quantile on the y axis; a vertical line appears at the Z -score closest to zero. Heterogeneity was evident when the two limbs of studies’ effects on either side of the vertical line formed a non-symmetrical inverted V shape. The LFK index was the difference in the area under each limb of the plot on either side of the vertical line. Values of the LKF index less than -1.0 and greater than 1.0 reflected asymmetry in the distribution of the studies’ Z -scores compared to the effect (proportion, rate difference, or g ).

In meta-analyses of proportions, forest plots and visual representations of effect size dispersion have been recommended to see the effects in individual studies but generalized linear mixed models with logit link function are recommended to estimate overall effects [ 21 ]. Thus, generalized linear mixed models (GLMM: IBM SPSS v28, Chicago IL) were used to estimate overall effects of gender and nation (US versus non-US) for the proportions of grant applications and awards, with the following assumptions: binomial probability distribution, logit link function, random effects for studies and intercepts; fixed effects for gender and nation (coded as US or non-US); repeated measure for gender. There were insufficient data to compare nations for the GLMMs of the proportions of application resubmissions or awards after resubmissions.

Included studies

A flow diagram [ 22 ] is shown in Fig. 1 . In summary, 241 studies were identified by the searches and other sources. After excluding studies that did not meet inclusion criteria, were duplicates, or contained data superseded by other studies, 55 studies provided data on one or more of the outcome variables [ 23 , 24 , 25 , 26 , 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 , 36 , 37 , 38 , 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 , 43 , 44 , 45 , 46 , 47 , 48 , 49 , 50 , 51 , 52 , 53 , 54 , 55 , 56 , 57 , 58 , 59 , 60 , 61 , 62 , 63 , 64 , 65 , 66 , 67 , 68 , 69 , 70 , 71 , 72 , 73 , 74 , 75 , 76 , 77 ].

Flow Diagram

These 55 studies provided data from 14 nations and the EU, reported data from 1975 to 2020 (see the Supplementary file eResults ) from diverse funding sources: 45 funding sources were named in the studies; additionally, five studies examined multiple funding sources (e.g., government, industry, foundation, intramural) but did not list the specific funders [ 34 , 40 , 42 , 72 , 73 ]. Most studies reported complete archival data on their population except for four studies that surveyed samples of participants [ 23 , 40 , 58 , 72 ]. Fourteen studies only referred to investigators by gender (25%), one study only referred to investigators by sex (2%, “male”, “female”), and 40 studies (73%) used both sex- and gender-linked terms regarding investigators.

Award acceptance rate

There were 29 sources comprising 36 samples that provided data for this meta-analysis ( n = 303,795 awards and 1,277,442 applications). (See Table 1 for meta-analysis results; see the Supplementary file eResults for forest plots, Doi plots and sensitivity analyses.) Unweighted average award acceptance rates were 22.7% for women and 24.3% for men. The pooled effect revealed a 1% lower award acceptance rate for women than men (95% CI 3% more for men to 1% more for women), which was not significantly different. Individual studies ranged from a 17% greater award acceptance rate for men in an intramural program [ 41 ] to a 5% greater award acceptance rate for women in a grant-writing program [ 74 ]. There was significant heterogeneity ( Q = 212.96, p < 0.001, I 2 = 84%) with evidence of reporting bias (LFK = -2.85). Among these 36 samples, the pooled award acceptance rate was 2% higher for men than women in non-US nations and 1% higher for men than women in the US, which was not significantly different.

Reapplication award acceptance rate

There were seven samples from six sources in this meta-analysis ( n = 3,324 awards and 7,318 applications). The pooled funding rate after reapplication was significantly (9%) lower for women than men ( k = 7; 95% CI 18% to 1%): unweighted data revealed a 38% funding rate for women versus 48% for men with moderate heterogeneity ( Q = 16.28, p = 0.01, I 2 = 63%) and no significant reporting bias (LFK = -0.44). Individual studies ranged from no gender difference among early career investigators in the Netherlands [ 71 ] to a 42% higher funding rate for men in otolaryngology who had previously received small grants [ 33 ]. There were five samples from the US and two from outside of the US, which were insufficient for nation comparisons.

Award amounts

There were 13 samples from nine sources that provided data for this meta-analysis ( n = 212,935 awards). The unweighted averages (and standard deviations) were $341,735.54 ($275,465.79) for women and $659,081.00 ($967,813.34) for men. Men received significantly larger award amounts than did women by a factor of 2.28 (95% CI 4.92 to 0.36). While all studies reported larger awards to men, the gender differential ranged from 0.11 for a Canadian program in the cognitive sciences [ 69 ] to a factor of 5.13 for NIH research project grants [ 52 ]. There was significant heterogeneity ( Q = 119,416.86, p < 0.001, I 2 = 100%), but no significant reporting bias (LFK = 0.67). In subgroup comparisons, the disparity between men’s and women’s award amounts was greater in the US than in non-US nations (factor of 5.11 compared to 0.24).

Proportions of applications

Thirty-two sources provided 39 independent samples of applications ( n = 1,311,5552, median per source = 3615, IQR = 15,464). Women accounted for 30% of applications (95% CI 22% to 38%). As shown in the forest plot, the proportion of women applicants ranged from 13% in the agricultural sciences [ 51 ] to 70% among a small cohort of biomedical researchers in a grant writing coaching program [ 74 ]. There was significant heterogeneity in effect sizes ( Q = 17,060, p < 0.001, I 2 = 100%) and in data sources with numbers of applications ranging from 64 to over 771,000. There was significant reporting bias (LFK = 2.87).

In subgroup comparisons of these 39 samples, there were similar pooled proportions of applications from women in US and non-US studies (30% and 31%, respectively). The results of the GLMM procedure showed a strong main effect for gender ( F (1,74) = 649.80, p < 0.001, but the main effect of nation and the gender by nation interaction were not significant ( F (1,74) = 0.00 and 1.08, p = 1.00 and 0.30, respectively).

Proportions of reapplications

Application resubmissions were reported by ten sources ( n = 44,138, median per source = 899, IQR = 3526) among previously successful (i.e., awardees) and unsuccessful applicants: women accounted for 31% of resubmissions (95% CI 24% to 37%). In individual studies the proportions of women reapplicants ranged from 23% in a study of Harvard Medical School faculty [ 73 ] to 62% among obstetrics-gynecology K awardees [ 54 ]. There was significant heterogeneity ( Q = 195.04, p < 0.001, I 2 = 95%) and evidence favoring reports of greater proportions of applications from women (LFK = 3.37). The results of the GLMM procedure revealed a strong main effect for gender ( F (1,18) = 534.54, p < 0.001). There were insufficient studies to conduct nation comparisons.

Proportions of awards

Forty-one sources provided 47 independent samples of the proportion of awards by gender ( n = 615,653 awards, median per source = 2377, IQR = 3785): women accounted for 24% of awards (95% CI 14% to 34%). The proportion of awards to women ranged from 17% in a Swiss program [ 37 ] to 72% among grant-writing program participants [ 72 ]. Reflecting the diversity in methodology, there was significant heterogeneity ( Q = 15,711.24, p < 0.001, I 2 = 100%) and evidence favoring reports of greater proportions of awards to women (LKF = 7.07).

Using these 47 samples, the proportion of awards to women was 6% higher in non-US nations than in the US (29% and 23%, respectively). The results of the GLMM procedure showed a strong main effect for gender ( F (1,88) = 437.08, p < 0.001, and a gender by nation interaction ( F (1,88) = 11.11, p = 0.001, but the main effect of nation was not significant ( F (1,88) = 0.00, p = 1.00). The proportion of awards to women in the US was smaller than to women elsewhere, and the proportion of awards to men in the US was larger than to men elsewhere.

Proportions of awards after reapplications

Based on ten sources, women received 30% of awards ( n = 156,574, median per source = 221, IQR = 854) after reapplication among previously funded scientists (95% CI 19% to 42%). The proportions of reapplying women awardees ranging from 8% among otolaryngologists who had previously received small grants [ 31 ], to 60% among previous obstetrics-gynecology K awardees [ 54 ] and among previous developmental psychopathology T recipients [ 60 ]. There was significant heterogeneity ( Q = 116.83, p < 0.001, I 2 = 92%) and evidence favoring reports of greater proportions of awards to women (LFK = 2.82). The results of the GLMM procedure showed a strong main effect for gender ( F (1,18) = 3487.11, p < 0.001). There were insufficient studies for nation comparisons.

Sensitivity analyses

Sensitivity analyses showed the extent to which excluding some of the large datasets would alter the outcomes, especially the NIH data [ 52 ]. Regarding the award acceptance rate and amount comparisons, when each study was excluded in turn, excluding the NIH data would have increased men’s greater award acceptance rate to 1.6% from a pooled rate of 1.0%, and men’s greater award amounts would have decreased to a factor of 0.24 more than women’s from a pooled factor of 2.28. For the proportion of applications, excluding the NIH data would decrease the proportion of applications from women to 28.5% from a pooled proportion of 30% with all studies included. For the proportion of awards, excluding the NIH data would have decreased the proportion of awards to women to 21.6%, compared to 24% with all studies included. Excluding the NIH data would have decreased the proportion of women receiving awards after resubmission to 27.3% from 30%. Finally, the sensitivity analyses of the proportions of application resubmissions and reapplication award acceptance rates showed small changes, less than 1%, when studies were excluded. None of the sensitivity analyses substantially changed heterogeneity such that statistically significant Q and large I 2 statistics were no longer so.

Representation of eligible researchers by gender

It is important to place these results in the context of the proportion of eligible researchers by gender. Supplementary file eResults (eTable2) summarizes the proportion outcomes for each study (from eFigures 10 , 13 , 16 , 19 ).

Proportions of eligible women researchers were estimated for each study ( n = 13,553,340, median per source = 17,585, IQR = 119,387). The pooled estimate of eligible women was 36% (95% CI 33% to 39%). As shown in the forest plot, the proportion of eligible women ranged from 13% in Italian agricultural sciences [ 51 ] to 67% among pediatric residents [ 41 ], developmental psychobiology postdoctoral trainees [ 60 ], and biomedical researchers in a grant writing coaching program [ 74 ]. There was significant heterogeneity in effect sizes ( Q = 130,375, p < 0.001, I 2 = 100%) and significant reporting bias (LFK = 2.07).

For each study, two columns in eTable 2 appraise the application/reapplication and award/award after reapplication proportions as less than, greater than, or equivalent to the eligible proportions (see Supplemental file eMethods ). Fewer women applied than were eligible in 54% of studies (25 of 46); more applied than were eligible in 22% of studies (10 of 46); and the proportions were equivalent in 24% of studies (11 of 46). Fewer women received awards in 65% of comparisons to eligible proportion estimates (33 of 51); more women in 20% (10 of 51); and equivalent proportions in 16% (8 of 51) (percentages are rounded). In the majority of papers, women were less likely to apply and to receive awards compared to those who were eligible.

A systematic review of the 2005–2020 literature yielded 55 sources of gender data on peer reviewed grants, predominantly from Europe and North America. The proportions of women that applied for grants (30%), re-applied (31%), accepted awards (24%), and accepted awards after reapplication (30%) were less than the proportion of eligible women (36%). However, the award acceptance rate was similar for women and men, implying no gender bias in this peer reviewed grant outcome. Additionally, women received smaller award amounts and fewer awards after re-applying, but these estimates were based on smaller numbers of studies.

This lack of gender difference in award acceptance rate is consistent with earlier observations [ 9 , 13 , 56 , 78 ]. A previous analysis of 1987–2005 grant award acceptance rates from Australia, western Europe and the United States found a 7% higher award acceptance rate for men albeit with a small effect size [ 12 ], but multilevel analyses of the same data that controlled for several factors found insignificant gender effects [ 13 ]. The 7% disparity was greater than the 1% higher award acceptance rate for men found in this study, which was not significant because the 95% confidence interval included zero. Thus, both current and past [ 13 ] reviews found nonsignificant gender differences for award acceptance rates. The previous review focused on one outcome – the gender difference in award acceptance rates – and all of the studies in their review provided data on this outcome. The present study examined other outcomes in addition to award acceptance rate and the outcomes reported by each source varied: not all sources provided data on all outcome variables. Ideally, all outcome variables would be available from each source to facilitate interpretation and comparison. The previous review performed a broader search (seven databases compared with three in the present study), but both studies used similar search terms (peer review; gender) and the sources were from similar geographic regions. The previous review used multilevel models; our study used traditional meta-analyses to examine gender albeit with a novel inverse variance heterogeneity model [ 17 ], augmented by multilevel models for outcomes expressed as proportions.

To further compare our data with the previous review [ 12 , 13 ], we input their data, aggregated all data for each source and conducted analyses of the proportions of applications and awards as we had done in the present study. The pooled prevalence of the proportions of women’s applications and awards were 21% and 19% based on the earlier data, as compared to 30% and 24% in the present study, suggesting that there have been significant gains in the representation of women among applicants and awardees since 2005 (see eDiscussion), consistent with a recent narrative review [ 11 ].

Persistence and securing continued funding are necessary for continued scientific productivity and advancement. Women submitted 31% of reapplications, however, their reapplication acceptance rate was significantly lower (9%) than men. The gap between the pooled gender disparities for the general award acceptance rate and the reapplication acceptance rate – 1% versus 9% – may result from underlying variability in the studies that contributed data to each statistic. Some of the reapplication studies examined reapplication of the same applications, and some examined continued funding or advancement in research, such as awards of research grants among previous career or small grant awardees.

Peer review of grant applications typically includes an evaluation of the investigator’s suitability to conduct the research, based on their past accomplishments, such as prior publications. Evaluations of women’s research accomplishments suffer when their research is devalued and their publications are less cited [ 79 ]. Increasingly, however, the use of metrics such as journal impact factor is discouraged, e.g., by projects DORA/TARA [ 80 ]. Women are less represented as academic rank increases, although the causes of women’s lesser representation are unclear [ 2 ]. Relatively few studies reported data on resubmissions after unsuccessful applications, competitive renewals, or maturation in funding mechanisms. In general, women resubmitted applications in similar proportions to overall applications: about 31%. Women comprised proportionally more of those with awards after resubmissions (30%) than women with general awards (24%).

Women’s 9% lower award acceptance rate after reapplication may reflect possible bias and the leaky pipeline [ 4 ] more than any other result in this study. This result was also consistent with the majority of studies’ conclusions that there was gender bias favoring men (see eResults). Male applicants have reported receiving more constructive feedback from peer reviewers than did female applicants [ 81 ], which may contribute to better outcomes after reapplication. Women were more likely to interpret peer reviewers’ feedback more negatively than did men, which in turn was related to less intention to reapply [ 28 ]. Women may be more discouraged by grant rejections than men, contributing to differential research productivity and longevity [ 82 ]. Women’s lesser success than men’s after reapplying for grants sheds no light on the potential processes contributing to this phenomenon, which are worthy of study. Furthermore, a focus on outcomes, as in the present study, does not address the complex interaction of individual, systemic, and social barriers that may produce and maintain such outcomes [ 11 , 79 ].

Women received significantly smaller award amounts than did men. This effect was especially pronounced for US-based studies: nation has been suggested as a potential moderator of gender differences in previous studies [ 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 ]. While the comparison of US and other nations’ amounts is novel, others have observed that women request and receive smaller award amounts than men. This effect could be because of different types and costs of research, lower salaries [ 83 ], or differential entitlement resulting from professional mentoring or other qualities [ 45 ]. Administrative budget reductions also could be a source of gender disparities. NIH awards are often less than requested: for example, the National Institute of Aging reduced continuing awards by an average of 20% in FY 2022 [ 84 ]. However, it would be unusual for other funders to award a lesser amount than requested, such as the Wellcome Trust [ 85 ]. In two papers in our review, women and men received similar proportions of their requested amounts in one [ 73 ], and in the other, men’s awarded amounts were significantly greater than women’s although their requested amounts did not differ [ 56 ], which the authors posit could be due to a bias against women engaging in risky research. Investigator requests, peer reviewer recommendations, and administrative decisions are all potential sources of gender differences in grant award amounts.

In comparisons of the US to non-US studies, there was a small difference in the proportion of applications submitted by women (1% more in non-US studies) and a 6% higher proportion of awards to women in non-US studies. These findings are potentially consistent with a 2020 report from the World Economic Forum in which the US ranked 53 rd in gender equality among 153 countries [ 86 ]. In contrast to the US, gender equity laws and policies exist in many EU countries [ 14 ].

It is important to place these results in the context of the representation of researchers by gender but challenging to do so. In the majority of studies, women were less likely to apply and to receive awards compared to estimates of eligible populations. However, these comparisons should be interpreted cautiously. Some estimates of the eligible population were precise (e.g., [ 63 ]), but other estimates were less specific to the sample. For example, some studies’ eligible proportions were based on all researchers whereas the grant applications were for early career researchers (e.g., [ 48 ]) and unsurprisingly, women’s share of applications was greater than the eligible proportion because women are better represented in the earlier academic ranks.

This study contributes to the reviews of gender participation in peer reviewed grants and is the only review of which we are aware to use systematic review and meta-analytic techniques since the 2007 and 2009 papers [ 12 , 13 ]. It is also unique in its consideration of several variables reflecting different aspects of participation and review. It also had several limitations. First, the data used in the study did not include all nations, mechanisms, and the entire 2005–2020 period. The sources were limited to those identified by searching the published literature and those cited by or citing the published literature, which included some reports from nations’ funders. It would be valuable to conduct a systematic review based on funders’ reports. Population data from funding sources would likely provide more stable estimates of outcomes. A search of the Pivot-RP database of funders (ProQuest, Inc) identified 8,857 government (national, state, local), industry, foundation, institutional, private, and other funders in the geographic regions of the studies in our review. Thus, our report stemming from the published literature represents data from a minority of possible funders. As shown in Fig. 1 , records in the meta-analysis found by the database searches were fewer than the additional sources identified by reviewing citated or citing articles of the records found through database searches. Some of the articles found through database searching were superseded by other sources or were included in the previous review (see Fig. 1 ). The additional sources were not identified by the database searches for several reasons. Of the 42 additional sources, 30 were indexed in PubMed; of those, 1 was not indexed, 7 (23%) were not indexed as gender; 10 (33%) were not indexed as grants or research support; and 15 (50%) were not indexed as peer review. The diversity of the additional sources suggests that the original search strategy was appropriate, but this literature had inconsistent index terms.

Some authors and funding agencies were responsive to our requests for additional data, but some did not respond or indicated they would not or could not provide data. For example, one national funding agency compiled data in response to our request, but its release to us was embargoed by its authorities. Such missing data could have contributed to the evidence of reporting bias found for most of the variables we examined.

Second, our goal was to use non-overlapping datasets. Most of the otherwise eligible studies identified by our searches were excluded because their data were superseded by another source. However, some overlap was still possible. For example, applications by Harvard school of medicine faculty to diverse funders probably included the NIH [ 73 ], but we were unable to examine applications separately by funding entity.

Third, we combined years of data because some sources could not be disaggregated by year or funding mechanism. The inability to disaggregate data by year and add a time variable to the analyses was a limitation of the study. The prior meta-analysis found no effect for the year that the study was published but noted that the year of the data collection may be a more appropriate comparator [ 12 ]. In future studies it would be valuable to examine the trajectories of change in award acceptance rates and other outcomes over time, particularly given the increased emphasis on gender equity initiatives and policies in recent years, some appear to result in a narrowing gender gap [ 2 ].

Sources varied in reporting data aggregated across funding mechanisms, or separately for different mechanisms. Although formal comparisons of outcomes for different mechanisms were beyond the scope of this paper, for example, women appeared to be more successful with personnel mechanisms (e.g., NWO “talent”, Swiss NSF career, NIH K) than research mechanisms (e.g., NWO “free competition”, Swiss NSF project, NIH research project grants). There would be value in examining data disaggregated by funding mechanism in addition to year.

Fourth, for some studies’ award amounts, we estimated the mean and standard deviation from median and IQR. Those studies’ data may not have been normally distributed, so the estimation of the mean and standard deviation may not be valid. Fifth, as most studies reported data on their population of interest, we did not conduct quality assessments on the small numbers of studies that surveyed samples. Sixth, studies were heterogeneous in size and focus, which may have contributed to the variability in effect sizes observed in most of the analyses.

Narrative reviews have stated that “grant peer review is a gender fair process” ([ 7 ], p. 3160] based on grant award acceptance rates. But conclusions about processes should not be inferred from outcomes [ 11 ]. Inferences about peer review processes should be based on process studies – for example, entailing blind reviews or experimental manipulation of gender pronouns – rather than on outcomes. While outcomes are suggestive, they are an insufficient basis for conclusions about processes. Also, a focus on variables beyond award acceptance rates is important to provide a more complete picture of gender similarities and differences. Differences in the submission of grant applications or the receipt of grant awards reflect different processes and involve different individuals, including investigators, mentors, peer reviewers, and scientific review officers. Additionally, the extant literature may include incorrect or misinterpreted information. For example, a widely cited study [ 45 ] reported that same number of applications by men to both NSF and NIH, and one of its authors affirmed that the number of applications to NSF was an error. This error raises concerns about others’ conclusions based on the data therein.

Future research on this topic would address the limitations in this study. Ideally, data would be disaggregated by year to inspect trends over time, and by gender or sex, with the latter concepts clearly identified and defined. Every source should provide person-level data on all outcome variables to facilitate the following comparisons: applicants to eligible applicants; rates of accepted awards to applications; reapplicants to eligible reapplicants; rates of accepted awards after reapplication to reapplications; awarded amounts to requested amounts. Moderator variables should include investigator variables of discipline, age, career level, institution type, percent of effort dedicated to research, previous productivity (papers, grants); funder variables of type (public, private), funding mechanism, and if the funder is subject to gender equity laws or policies; and contextual variables of author gender (e.g., proportion of women authors of the report) and proportion of eligible women or women in the discipline. The foundation of this study was a systematic review of the published literature, followed by forwards and backwards searches, which yielded heterogenous sources from small intramural grant programs to large, national funders. Analyses of more homogeneous sources would be valuable, such as data from national funders separately from private foundations, and from intramural mechanisms.

Evidence of differential gender participation in peer reviewed grant applications and awards has led to recommended [ 4 ] and implemented policies, such as “structural priority funding” to women ( [ 25 ], p. 3). Increasing the proportions of women grant peer reviewers is also recommended. A recent study of NIH study sections found women comprised about one-third of reviewers [ 87 ]. They recommended increasing women’s involvement in the review process for “opportunities to impact the nation’s research agenda” ([ 87 ], p. 3). More fundamentally, participation in peer review provides invaluable insight into the peer review process, to cutting edge ideas, and to new colleagues for collaboration, mentoring, and sources of external review letters. Europe has been a leader in policies to promote gender equality in research funding, such as Horizon Europe [ 14 ], gender quotas on review panels [ 88 ], and the Marie Sklodowska-Curie actions: the latter reported that from 2014 to 2018, women received 53.2% of the projects for experienced researchers [ 89 ]. Other countries’ gender equity policies and initiatives have not yet met with this level of success. In the UK, the representation of women professors in UK institutions of higher education grew from 24.2% in 2012/2013 to 26.8% in 2016/2017, but the growth was not clearly linked to institutions’ level of engagement with the Athena Scientific Women’s Academic Network (SWAN) initiative [ 90 ]. In the US, women faculty in STEM among awardees of NSF Institutional Transformation grants grew 8% to 24% and comparator institutions grew relatively less (5%) but had better overall representation (27%) [ 91 ]. Individuals’ outcomes – the focus of this review – cannot reflect cumulative systemic and social inequalities and disadvantages [ 11 , 79 ] that are contextually important to and drivers of such outcomes. Equity initiatives hold promise to compensate for some sources of gender disparities.

Women submitted only 30% of grant applications – less than those eligible to do so – but their award acceptance rate was similar to men. However, women received smaller award amounts and fewer awards after reapplying, which may negatively affect continued scientific productivity. These estimates were based on smaller numbers of data points than for award acceptance rates. Greater transparency in grant funding is needed to monitor and verify these data globally, and to allow for analysis of changes over time.

Availability of data and materials

The analysis syntax and datasets supporting the conclusions of this article are available at the Open Science repository, https://osf.io/e5t4v/ .

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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Anne Blake-Nickels, Katherine Brandt, Ashley Marshall, Tiffany Nguyen, Molly Permin, and Haylee Stack for their assistance with data collection.

This work was supported by National Science Foundation awards 1951251 and 1951132. The funders had no role in study design, data collection, analysis and interpretation, or in writing the manuscript.

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Schmaling, K.B., Gallo, S.A. Gender differences in peer reviewed grant applications, awards, and amounts: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Res Integr Peer Rev 8 , 2 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41073-023-00127-3

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v.13(4); 2021 Apr

Gender Disparity in Grants and Awards at the National Institute of Health

Beenish safdar.

1 Graduate Medical Education, John T Mather Memorial Hospital, Port Jefferson, USA

Sadiq Naveed

2 Psychiatry, Hartford Hospital, Institute of Living, Hartford, USA

Amna Mohyud Din Chaudhary

3 Psychiatry, Nishtar Medical College and Hospital, Multan, PAK

Sundas Saboor

4 Department of Psychiatry, Khyber Medical University, Peshawar, PAK

Muhammad Zeshan

5 Department of Psychiatry, Rutgers University, Newark, USA

Faisal Khosa

6 Radiology, Vancouver General Hospital, Vancouver, CAN

The National Institute of Health (NIH) supports the academic career of scientists across the United States (U.S.). It promotes and sponsors scientists in conducting wide-ranging clinical and basic science research. Depending on the duration, research type, and budget, there are various types of grants awarded by NIH. Despite considerable advancement in biomedical sciences, female researchers remain underrepresented in obtaining NIH funding. Through this study, we aim to highlight the gender trends in NIH funding and grants. By doing this, we aim to facilitate effective future policymaking to help achieve gender parity in NIH grants and awards.

The data were obtained from the NIH Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tool (RePORT). The extracted data by gender were tabulated showing percentages of females as Research Grant Investigators, Research Career Development Award Recipients and Kirschstein-National Research Service Award (NRSA) Trainees and Fellows, recipients of Research Grants, Research Project Grants (RPGs), and R01 equivalent grants including types 1 or 2, over two decades (1999-2019). Absolute percentage change was also calculated and included in the tables.

The percentage of females as NIH Research Grant Investigators has increased at centers, research centers as well as for RPGs and Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer (SBIR/STTR) programs. For Research Career Development Award Recipients and Kirschstein-NRSA Trainees and Fellows, the proportion of female pre-doctoral institutional trainees, post-doctoral fellows, post-doctoral institutional trainees, mentored research career awardees, and other research career awardees have steadily increased. However, there was a decrease in the percentage of female pre-doctoral fellow awardees. The percentage of females receiving all RPGs, R01-New (type 1) and R01-Renewal (type 2) grants has also decreased.

Despite an overall increase in the percentage of female researchers successfully receiving NIH grants and awards, they continue to lag compared to their male counterparts. With the increasing number of female doctoral graduates, it is imperative to address this disparity in NIH funding.

Introduction

Despite the higher percentage of female doctoral graduates, there is a considerable gender gap in research leadership at federal government departments. More than half of the doctoral degrees in biology, psychology, and medical disciplines at the universities and research institutions in the U.S. are secured by females. This number of female doctoral graduates in the U.S. is expected to grow till the year 2029 [ 1 ]. A case-control analysis conducted on data extracted from the United States National Institutes of Health and other federal departments, including the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and Veterans Affairs showed that females comprised only 27% of the top research leadership at NIH and a lesser percentage in other departments. In addition to gender disparity at the faculty level, female scientists and researchers are less than one-third of the grantees at NIH [ 2 ]. For example, NIH intramural research program, an internal research program, has only 31% female research investigators [ 3 ].

The NIH is the world’s largest public funding agency and provides around $30 billion annually for biomedical research [ 4 , 5 ]. NIH's goal is to promote, facilitate, sponsor, and therefore enable major inventive disclosures, imaginative research methodologies, and their applications as a reason for eventually ensuring and improving general well-being. NIH comprises 27 research institutes and centers, each focusing on a specialized subdivision of biomedical sciences (e.g., National Institute of Mental Health, National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Engineering, National Institute of Human Genome Research Institute, etc.). These institutes grant over 80% of their budget to support research initiatives worldwide, including 50,000 competitive awards to more than 300,000 scientists at 2,500 colleges, medical schools, and other research foundations [ 6 ].

The NIH grants are specified by an activity code representing the type of research funded [ 7 ]. The individual eligibility for grants varies from pre-doctoral students on research training grants to investigators with extensive experience that run large research centers. This study aims to highlight the gender trends of NIH grant support and characterize potential explanations for existing gender differences. Through this study, we aim to facilitate future policy-making to achieve gender parity in NIH funding.

Materials and methods

Our methodology has been validated in recent publications [ 3 , 8 ]. Institutional Review Board approval was not required for this retrospective study. Data were obtained from the publicly available data at NIH Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tools (RePORT) - NIH Data Book [ 9 ]. We utilized the NIH grant and funding reports for the consecutive fiscal years 1999 to 2019.

Variables and data analysis

The percentage of females as Research Grant Investigators (RGIs) and the differences by mechanism, i.e., Research Project Grants (RPGs), at Centers, for other research, as Research Career and Small Business Innovation Research/Small Business Technology Transfer (SBIR/STTR) were examined, from the year 1998 to 2019. Similarly, the percentage of females (by Activity Code and Career Stage) as Research Career Development Award Recipients and Kirschstein-NRSA Trainees and Fellows were compared over the study period to examine the temporal trends. The changes in the percentage of females receiving Research Grants were also surveyed, as well as the average funding of these research grants in current dollars (amount received unadjusted for inflation) and constant dollars (amount received after adjustment for inflation) was also compared between genders [ 10 ].

The absolute percentage change was calculated to highlight the trends of female representation under the observed categories. This was a descriptive study so no statistical tests of significance were conducted.

Research grants are defined as extramural awards made for research centers, research projects, small business innovation research/small business technology transfer (SBIR/STTR), and other research grants. Between the years 1998 and 2019, there was an absolute increase of 11% in the percentage of females receiving research grants (Table (Table1). 1 ). Furthermore, there has been a substantial increase in females’ percentage as Research Grant Investigators (RGIs) in a research career, with an absolute increase of 18%. It is followed by an increase for female RGIs in the centers by 15%, females conducting other research by 14%, and a 12% increase in females receiving the RPGs in these two decades (Table 2 ). The least absolute increase of 5% was seen in the percentage of females receiving the SBIR/STTR. But overall, the increase in each category for females was promising and reassuring.

The overall percentage of females receiving Research Career Development Award Recipients and Kirschstein-NRSA Trainees and Fellows showed an increase except in the category of pre-doctoral fellows where females had an absolute decrease of 18% (Table (Table3). 3 ). All other categories had an increased representation of females, with the greatest increase seen in Mentored Research Career Awardees (+28%) and the least increase in females as post-doctoral fellows (+9%) (Table 3 ).

Pre-doctoral fellowships include activity codes F30 and F31. Post-doctoral fellowships include activity codes F32. Mentored Research Career Awards include activity codes: K01, K07, K08, K22, K23, K25, K99, KL1, and KL2. Other Research Career Awards are defined as any other K activity code not included in Mentored Research Career Awards. Kirschstein-NRSA Training Grants include activity codes T32, T34, T35, T36, T90, TL1, TL4, and TU2. Not all of these activities may be in use by NIH every year.

When comparing the funding of research grants, the total funding amount for females was less each year since 1998, with males receiving higher funding amounts in both current and constant dollars (Table 4 ). Females received higher funding in 2018 for SBIR/STTR than males when the analysis was done for funding by category and comparing the funding for the years 2018 and 2019. In comparison, all other funding by mechanism had greater funding received by males (Table 5 ).

Research grants are defined as extramural awards made for research centers, research projects, Small Business Innovation Research/Small Business Technology Transfer (SBIR/STTR), and other research grants. Research grants are defined by the following activity codes: R, P, M, S, K, U (excluding UC6), DP1, DP2, DP3, DP4, DP5, D42, & G12. Current dollars and constant dollars represent average costs. Constant dollars were computed using 1998 as the base from the Biomedical Research and Development Price Index (BRDPI) based on the latest fiscal year. Constant dollar figures are not yet available for FY2019.

This article reviewed the gender differences in NIH funding and grants, contributing to impediments for ensuring a diverse faculty. NIH funding is considered academically prestigious and can often be critical in retaining and promoting faculty [ 11 ]. Our data displays the trends in the advancement of females in research careers in the last two decades. Undoubtedly, females have made progress as research investigators, awardees of small business grants, and overall RPGs. However, the percentage of female pre-doctoral (K01) awardees is not comparable to their rising number in the U.S. Therefore, females are not well represented in research careers at the NIH, compared to their male counterparts.

The previous studies exploring the effects of gender on NIH funding have shown mixed results [ 12 , 13 ]. A retrospective cohort study (1997-2007) showed that less than one-quarter of K award recipient females were able to receive a higher award within five years as compared to their male counterparts [ 11 ]. A "spillage issue" in the early pipeline of academic career, even among those who want research vocations, is more prominent for females [ 11 ]. Another study analyzed the NIH data regarding research and training grants supported in 2008. It found that females and males were generally equally successful at all career stages. However, males with previous experience as NIH grantees had higher application and funding rates than females at similar career points [ 12 ]. Female MDs, as first-time investigators, had a 20% success rate compared to males (24%), and as experienced investigators, females were 32% successful compared to 36% of experienced male applicants [ 13 ]. These findings were also corroborated in a study exploring the NIH grant funding in the discipline of radiology. It was reported that there is a significant gender difference in mean NIH grants awarded to radiology investigators for 2016-2019 inclusive ($619,807.00 for male Ph.D. investigators vs. $158,486.00 for female Ph.D. investigators) [ 14 ].

A study examining the gender-specific NIH grant application rates found that the number of females submitting grants to NIH was less than males (56% vs 62%), female investigators submitted no more than one grant, applied for lesser years of funding than males (3.1 years vs 3.4 years), smaller budget ($115,325 vs $150,000), the success rate of grants and resubmission of the grants was significantly higher for males than females (41% vs 44%, and 43% for females and 51% for males, respectively). There is gender parity in grant success rates at higher academic ranks, while some gender disparity was noticed in lower academic ranks [ 15 ]. Findings from another study raised the possibility of gender bias in the NIH peer review process of grants [ 16 ].

Gender discrimination also persists in academic publishing and institutional policies [ 17 , 18 ]. A retrospective analysis (1997-2004) of prominent medical research journals showed that the percentage of females as first and last authors of original studies increased, but their percentage remained low as authors of original articles and guest editorials compared to males [ 16 ]. Another study found that after adjustment for publications and seniority, the funding gap between the genders was no longer significant (P = 0.08 and P = 0.16 for females and males, respectively), suggesting that seniority and publications play an important role in award size [ 3 ]. The Buddeberg-Fischer cohort found that female physicians received significantly less mentoring [ 19 ]. Mentorship is pivotal for career guidance, research productivity, and grant success [ 19 ]. Unfortunately, females have greater difficulty finding mentors than males especially since the advent of the ME 2 movement which has given voice to many on one hand, has also had unintended consequences [ 20 ].

There were several limitations to our study because the information mirroring applicants' academic reputation and credentials were not accessible for analysis, we cannot rule out the likelihood that gender disparities in features related to academic productivity (age, authorship position, academic rank) brought about differential candidate assessments in our investigation [ 21 ]. Also, we did not have access to individual award amounts, so we cannot conclusively remark on whether differences in award amounts contribute to the observed gender differences in various award achievements. A portion of the observed gap may also originate from professional choices made by males and females with some theorizing that females may have different priorities regarding the balance between work and other pursuits, devote most of their time in teaching and clinical activity than to research [ 22 ].

Lastly, our study shows that although we are progressing towards increased participation of females in NIH programs, further policies and actions are required to circumvent and mitigate the remaining gender differences. These should include the development of new initiatives, in addition to continuing current programs, while carefully monitoring progress to ensure that resources are available to allow scientists to achieve successful and meaningful research careers and to improve the health of our nation.

Conclusions

It is important to address the underrepresentation of women at the world’s largest research centers like NIH. Despite considerable advancement in gender equity, women are underrepresented as NIH grant recipients and awardees. This disparity is more evident for the women's pre-doctoral fellow awards. Although the trends show an improvement in female representation and funding at the NIH, the progress has been slower when compared to the dramatic increase in female doctoral candidates in recent years. Further studies are needed to explore whether the differences in NIH awards and funding are due to lower application success rates or a lower proportion of females applying for these grants. Nevertheless, concrete steps are required to ensure and encourage female funding and progress the research careers of females at the NIH.

The content published in Cureus is the result of clinical experience and/or research by independent individuals or organizations. Cureus is not responsible for the scientific accuracy or reliability of data or conclusions published herein. All content published within Cureus is intended only for educational, research and reference purposes. Additionally, articles published within Cureus should not be deemed a suitable substitute for the advice of a qualified health care professional. Do not disregard or avoid professional medical advice due to content published within Cureus.

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

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Consent was obtained or waived by all participants in this study

Animal Ethics

Animal subjects: All authors have confirmed that this study did not involve animal subjects or tissue.

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Lynda S. Hart Undergraduate Award in Sexuality Studies Lynda Hart Prize

Recent Award Recipients

(Honorable Mention) "If I have to be fiery, I'll be fiery": How Women Respond to Harassment in Online Videogames

Carroll Smith-Rosenberg Senior Thesis Award in Women's Studies 2023

National Institutes of Health ( NIH )

Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development ( NICHD ) National Cancer Institute ( NCI ) National Human Genome Research Institute ( NHGRI ) National Institute on Aging ( NIA ) National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism ( NIAAA ) National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases ( NIAID ) National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders ( NIDCD ) National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences ( NIEHS ) National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities ( NIMHD ) National Institute of Mental Health ( NIMH ) National Institute of Nursing Research ( NINR ) Division of Program Coordination, Planning and Strategic Initiatives: Sexual & Gender Minority Research Office ( SGMRO ) Office of AIDS Research ( OAR ) Office of Research on Women’s Health ( ORWH )

Research on the Health of Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Populations (R01 Clinical Trial Optional)

R01 Research Project Grant

Reissue of PA-17-478 .

May 19, 2020 - Notice of Special Interest (NOSI): Development and Preliminary Testing of Health-related Behavioral Interventions. See Notice NOT-OD-20-106 .
March 10, 2020 - Reminder: FORMS-F Grant Application Forms & Instructions Must be Used for Due Dates On or After May 25, 2020- New Grant Application Instructions Now Available. See Notice NOT-OD-20-077 .
August 23, 2019 - Clarifying Competing Application Instructions and Notice of Publication of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) Regarding Proposed Human Fetal Tissue Research. See Notice NOT-OD-19-137 .
July 26, 2019 - Changes to NIH Requirements Regarding Proposed Human Fetal Tissue Research. See Notice NOT-OD-19-128 .
November 26, 2018 - NIH & AHRQ Announce Upcoming Updates to Application Instructions and Review Criteria for Research Grant Applications. See Notice NOT-OD-18-228 .

PA-18-728 , R21 Exploratory/Developmental Grant

See Section III. 3. Additional Information on Eligibility .

93.865; 93.399, 93.396, 93.395, 93.394, 93.393; 93.172; 93.866; 93.273; 93.855; 93.173; 93.113; 93.307; 93.313; 93.242; 93.361

This funding opportunity announcement (FOA) calls for research on the health of transgender and gender nonconforming people of all ages, including both youth and adults who are questioning their gender identity and those individuals who are making or who have made a transition from being identified as one gender to the other. This group encompasses individuals whose gender identity differs from the sex on their original birth certificate or whose gender expression varies significantly from what is traditionally associated with or typical for that sex.

March 28, 2018

May 5, 2018

Not Applicable

Standard dates apply, by 5:00 PM local time of applicant organization. All types of non-AIDS applications allowed for this funding opportunity announcement are due on these dates.

Applicants are encouraged to apply early to allow adequate time to make any corrections to errors found in the application during the submission process by the due date.

Standard AIDS dates apply, by 5:00 PM local time of applicant organization. All types of AIDS and AIDS-related applications allowed for this funding opportunity announcement are due on these dates.

Standard dates apply

January 8, 2021

It is critical that applicants follow the Research (R) Instructions in the SF424 (R&R) Application Guide , except where instructed to do otherwise (in this FOA or in a Notice from the NIH Guide for Grants and Contracts ). Conformance to all requirements (both in the Application Guide and the FOA) is required and strictly enforced. Applicants must read and follow all application instructions in the Application Guide as well as any program-specific instructions noted in Section IV . When the program-specific instructions deviate from those in the Application Guide, follow the program-specific instructions. Applications that do not comply with these instructions may be delayed or not accepted for review.

Part 1. Overview Information Part 2. Full Text of the Announcement

Section I. Funding Opportunity Description Section II. Award Information Section III. Eligibility Information Section IV. Application and Submission Information Section V. Application Review Information Section VI. Award Administration Information Section VII. Agency Contacts Section VIII. Other Information

This funding opportunity announcement (FOA) calls for research on the health of transgender and gender nonconforming people. Transgender and gender nonconforming people encompass individuals whose gender identity differs from the sex on their original birth certificate, including individuals who are making or who have made a transition from being identified as one gender to the other, as well as individuals who are questioning their gender identity, who identify with more than one gender, or whose gender expression varies significantly from what is traditionally associated with or typical for that sex. While there are a number of terms for this group of individuals, for the sake of consistency this document will refer to the group as transgender and gender nonconforming people.

This FOA calls for research addressing the medical, sociological, psychological and structural causes and consequences of transgender and gender nonconforming identities. Investigations of the social determinants of health in these populations are needed, including understanding the impact of stigma, the high impact of HIV, minority stress, education, employment, violence, homelessness, and incarceration. More information is needed on relationships with partners and family, as well as on sexual and reproductive health. Successful aging, including the impact of life events, experiences, and interventions such as hormone therapy and surgery are other important topics to investigate. It will also be important to learn more about brain development, resilience, and end-of-life issues. Collaborative, cross disciplinary work will be essential. Areas of research sought include but are not limited to:

Improved Methodology and Measurement

Development and validation of methods responsive to the heterogeneity of transgender and gender nonconforming populations (gender identity and fluidity, sexual orientation, developmental stages, hormonal regimens, surgical procedures, SES, racial/ethnic differences).
Development and testing of new and/or current measures of identifying transgender and gender nonconforming people in research studies.
Development and testing of new methods to improve estimates of the size and demographic characteristics of the transgender and gender nonconforming populations in the United States.
Development of methods to better understand item non-response and non-participation among transgender and gender nonconforming persons in scientific surveys and other studies.
Approaches to improve the representativeness of existing and emerging data, including the use of electronic health records.
Longitudinal/life-course approaches.
Methods to obtain larger sample sizes of transgender and gender nonconforming populations and sub-groups that would allow for well-powered statistical analyses.
Improvement in standardizing terminology for reporting phenotypes, surgical procedures, hormone regimens, clinical records, data collection, management, and analysis across a variety of clinical and non-clinical settings.
Consideration of improvement in legal and ethical issues in research on transgender and gender nonconforming populations, such as personal and/or community consent for study participation.

Development of Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Identities

Examination of the biological underpinnings of gender and gender identity, and the health implications of identification with the range of identities and with the chosen rather than the sex on their original birth certificate.
Research producing data on the incidence and prevalence of childhood gender-variant or transgender and gender nonconforming identities and the factors associated with continuing this identity into adolescence and adulthood, and implications for health.
Research on gender identity development and change, including diversity in gender identity and expression, particularly for non-binary transgender identities and within diverse racial and ethnic groups and implications for health.
Research on how family and social support during gender identity development impact children’s health outcomes.
Research on how age of development of transgender and gender nonconforming identities affect mental and physical health.

Improvements in Diagnosis and Clinical Management of Gender Dysphoria

Evaluation of how the timing of interventions, including hormonal and surgical interventions, affect development and physical and mental health.
Studies of the outcomes, physical and psychological, of pubertal suppression [blocking] and cross-sex hormones, considering the age of initiation of such treatment.
Research on the impact of brain development of hormonal therapy and surgical interventions such as removal of testes and ovaries.
Studies of the impact of standardized treatment plans and prescription guidelines, addressing clinician gatekeeping as a factor in health outcomes.
Research evaluating the health outcomes of contemporary approaches to treatment whereby hormone therapy is not necessarily followed by surgery, and gender identity and expression do not conform to binary conceptualizations of sex and gender.
Rigorous empirical evaluation of the criteria in the Standards of Care to assess and treat gender dysphoria. These could include whether and when diagnosis of gender dysphoria is stigmatizing, whether psychotherapy should be required before hormone therapy or surgery, whether a period of real life experience before hormone therapy is helpful or potentially harmful, and the value and length of the real-life experience before surgery.
Systematic evaluation on the feasibility, acceptability, and effectiveness of the informed consent model and other treatment approaches that do not adhere to the Standards of Care. Research on whether adherence to the eligibility criteria of the Standards of Care predicted post-operative development and physical and mental health.
Studies of the prevalence and predictors of the persistence of gender dysphoria and the impact of interventions (psychological, hormonal, and surgical) on persisting dysphoria.

Health Outcomes of Long-term Hormone Use and Surgical Treatment

Research on the factors associated with outcomes of gender affirming surgery.
Research on how socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity, and age among transgender and gender nonconforming persons affect treatment choices and health outcomes.
Investigations of the safety of treatment with Gonadotropin-releasing [GnRH] analogues and hormones at various ages.
Research on the effects of hormone administration and/or how the blocking of puberty with GnRH analogs affect overall physical health and well-being, including sex-specific brain development.
Research that examines the differential impact of diseases and conditions in transgender and gender nonconforming individuals as a result of treatment options and interactions with hormone therapies, such as osteoporosis or hematologic issues, thrombosis related to estrogen and polycythemia related to androgens.
Examinations of differential mortality from diseases and conditions such as Type 2 diabetes mellitus, lipids disorders, cardiovascular disease (CVD), venous thromboembolism, and cancer as a result of long-term hormone use.
Research on the effects of hormone therapy on the fertility of transgender and gender nonconforming individuals and its implications for reproductive health.
Studies of HIV drug treatment and prophylaxis interactions with hormonal and surgical treatments.
Research on how irregular use of hormonal treatment affects physical and emotional health.
Studies on how estrogen hormone treatments affect the male reproductive tissues of individuals transitioning from male to female, and how androgen hormone treatments affect the female reproductive tissues of individuals transitioning from female to male.
Studies that examine the extent and consequences of the use of body fillers such as silicones on health outcomes.

Quality of Life and Mental Health

Studies of interpersonal relationships and sexual and reproductive health, including studies on fertility, in men and women.
Research on aging, including end-of-life care in transgender and gender nonconforming individuals. Research on the impact of complementary health approaches and their integration into conventional health to facilitate successful aging, including end-of-life care.
Research on the determinants and consequences of psychiatric conditions, pre- and post-transition.
Research on substance use (alcohol, drugs, tobacco) and its treatment among transgender and gender nonconforming people.
Improved understanding of multivariate risk for, and protection against, the onset of mental disorders and suicidal behavior (including studies that look at multiple RDoC domains; https://www.nimh.nih.gov/research-priorities/rdoc/index.shtml); with consideration for transition periods that may heighten risk. In particular, studies that utilize RDoC-consistent measures could inform the etiological factors for both transgender, gender nonconforming, and other individuals.
Given the high rates of suicide ideation and attempts, and frequent experiences of harassment, discrimination, violence and rejection among transgender and gender nonconforming individuals, research into what factors protect against suicide ideation in this population and how these factors can inform preventative interventions.
Strategies to improve mental health outcomes among transgender and gender nonconforming individuals, the effectiveness of strategies for referral and engagement in mental health treatment and services with providers and in settings that are informed about transgender-related care issues.

See Section VIII. Other Information for award authorities and regulations.

Grant: A support mechanism providing money, property, or both to an eligible entity to carry out an approved project or activity.

New Resubmission Revision

The OER Glossary and the SF424 (R&R) Application Guide provide details on these application types.

Optional: Accepting applications that either propose or do not propose clinical trial(s)

Need help determining whether you are doing a clinical trial?

The number of awards is contingent upon NIH appropriations and the submission of a sufficient number of meritorious applications.

Application budgets are not limited but need to reflect the actual needs of the proposed project.

The scope of the proposed project should determine the project period. The maximum project period is 5 years.

NIH grants policies as described in the NIH Grants Policy Statement will apply to the applications submitted and awards made from this FOA.

Higher Education Institutions

Public/State Controlled Institutions of Higher Education
Private Institutions of Higher Education

The following types of Higher Education Institutions are always encouraged to apply for NIH support as Public or Private Institutions of Higher Education:

Hispanic-serving Institutions
Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs)
Tribally Controlled Colleges and Universities (TCCUs)
Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian Serving Institutions
Asian American Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions (AANAPISIs)

Nonprofits Other Than Institutions of Higher Education

Nonprofits with 501(c)(3) IRS Status (Other than Institutions of Higher Education)
Nonprofits without 501(c)(3) IRS Status (Other than Institutions of Higher Education)

For-Profit Organizations

Small Businesses
For-Profit Organizations (Other than Small Businesses)

Governments

State Governments
County Governments
City or Township Governments
Special District Governments
Indian/Native American Tribal Governments (Federally Recognized)
Indian/Native American Tribal Governments (Other than Federally Recognized)
Eligible Agencies of the Federal Government
U.S. Territory or Possession
Independent School Districts
Public Housing Authorities/Indian Housing Authorities
Native American Tribal Organizations (other than Federally recognized tribal governments)
Faith-based or Community-based Organizations
Regional Organizations
Non-domestic (non-U.S.) Entities (Foreign Institutions)

Non-domestic (non-U.S.) Entities (Foreign Institutions) are eligible to apply. Non-domestic (non-U.S.) components of U.S. Organizations are eligible to apply. Foreign components, as defined in the NIH Grants Policy Statement , are allowed.

Applicant Organizations

Applicant organizations must complete and maintain the following registrations as described in the SF 424 (R&R) Application Guide to be eligible to apply for or receive an award. All registrations must be completed prior to the application being submitted. Registration can take 6 weeks or more, so applicants should begin the registration process as soon as possible. The NIH Policy on Late Submission of Grant Applications states that failure to complete registrations in advance of a due date is not a valid reason for a late submission.

Dun and Bradstreet Universal Numbering System (DUNS) - All registrations require that applicants be issued a DUNS number. After obtaining a DUNS number, applicants can begin both SAM and eRA Commons registrations. The same DUNS number must be used for all registrations, as well as on the grant application.
System for Award Management (SAM) (formerly CCR) Applicants must complete and maintain an active registration, which requires renewal at least annually . The renewal process may require as much time as the initial registration. SAM registration includes the assignment of a Commercial and Government Entity (CAGE) Code for domestic organizations which have not already been assigned a CAGE Code.
NATO Commercial and Government Entity (NCAGE) Code Foreign organizations must obtain an NCAGE code (in lieu of a CAGE code) in order to register in SAM.
eRA Commons - Applicants must have an active DUNS number and SAM registration in order to complete the eRA Commons registration. Organizations can register with the eRA Commons as they are working through their SAM or Grants.gov registration. eRA Commons requires organizations to identify at least one Signing Official (SO) and at least one Program Director/Principal Investigator (PD/PI) account in order to submit an application.
Grants.gov Applicants must have an active DUNS number and SAM registration in order to complete the Grants.gov registration.

Program Directors/Principal Investigators (PD(s)/PI(s))

All PD(s)/PI(s) must have an eRA Commons account. PD(s)/PI(s) should work with their organizational officials to either create a new account or to affiliate their existing account with the applicant organization in eRA Commons. If the PD/PI is also the organizational Signing Official, they must have two distinct eRA Commons accounts, one for each role. Obtaining an eRA Commons account can take up to 2 weeks.

Any individual(s) with the skills, knowledge, and resources necessary to carry out the proposed research as the Program Director(s)/Principal Investigator(s) (PD(s)/PI(s)) is invited to work with his/her organization to develop an application for support. Individuals from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups as well as individuals with disabilities are always encouraged to apply for NIH support.

For institutions/organizations proposing multiple PDs/PIs, visit the Multiple Program Director/Principal Investigator Policy and submission details in the Senior/Key Person Profile (Expanded) Component of the SF424 (R&R) Application Guide.

This FOA does not require cost sharing as defined in the NIH Grants Policy Statement .

Applicant organizations may submit more than one application, provided that each application is scientifically distinct.

The NIH will not accept duplicate or highly overlapping applications under review at the same time. This means that the NIH will not accept:

A new (A0) application that is submitted before issuance of the summary statement from the review of an overlapping new (A0) or resubmission (A1) application.
A resubmission (A1) application that is submitted before issuance of the summary statement from the review of the previous new (A0) application.
An application that has substantial overlap with another application pending appeal of initial peer review (see NOT-OD-11-101 ).

Buttons to access the online ASSIST system or to download application forms are available in Part 1 of this FOA. See your administrative office for instructions if you plan to use an institutional system-to-system solution.

It is critical that applicants follow the Research (R) Instructions in the SF424 (R&R) Application Guide , except where instructed in this funding opportunity announcement to do otherwise. Conformance to the requirements in the Application Guide is required and strictly enforced. Applications that are out of compliance with these instructions may be delayed or not accepted for review.

For information on Application Submission and Receipt, visit Frequently Asked Questions Application Guide, Electronic Submission of Grant Applications .

All page limitations described in the SF424 Application Guide and the Table of Page Limits must be followed.

The following section supplements the instructions found in the SF424 (R&R) Application Guide and should be used for preparing an application to this FOA.

All instructions in the SF424 (R&R) Application Guide must be followed.

All instructions in the SF424 (R&R) Application Guide must be followed, with the following additional instructions:

Resource Sharing Plan : Individuals are required to comply with the instructions for the Resource Sharing Plans as provided in the SF424 (R&R) Application Guide, with the following modification:

All applications, regardless of the amount of direct costs requested for any one year, should include a Data Sharing Plan. The Data Sharing Plan will be considered during peer review and by program staff as award decisions are being made as appropriate and consistent with achieving the goals of the program. It is expected that the results of NICHD-funded research will be shared with the wider scientific community in a timely manner.

Awardees are strongly encouraged to deposit large-scale, human genetic data in the database for Genotype and Phenotype dbGaP ( https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/gap ). For other data and biospecimens from human genetic or non-genetic studies, awardees are encouraged to use the NICHD Data and Specimen Hub DASH ( https://dash.nichd.nih.gov/ ) or other equivalent broad-sharing data and/or biospecimen repositories.

The following resource describing Common Data Elements may be helpful during the planning phases of a project when considering ways to optimize data collection in order to facilitate broad data sharing: https://www.nlm.nih.gov/cde/ .

Only limited Appendix materials are allowed. Follow all instructions for the Appendix as described in the SF424 (R&R) Application Guide.

When involving NIH-defined human subjects research, clinical research, and/or clinical trials (and when applicable, clinical trials research experience) follow all instructions for the PHS Human Subjects and Clinical Trials Information form in the SF424 (R&R) Application Guide, with the following additional instructions:

If you answered Yes to the question Are Human Subjects Involved? on the R&R Other Project Information form, you must include at least one human subjects study record using the Study Record: PHS Human Subjects and Clinical Trials Information form or Delayed Onset Study record.

Study Record: PHS Human Subjects and Clinical Trials Information

All instructions in the SF424 (R&R) Application Guide must be followed .

Delayed Onset Study

Foreign (non-U.S.) institutions must follow policies described in the NIH Grants Policy Statement , and procedures for foreign institutions.

See Part 1. Section III.1 for information regarding the requirement for obtaining a unique entity identifier and for completing and maintaining active registrations in System for Award Management (SAM), NATO Commercial and Government Entity (NCAGE) Code (if applicable), eRA Commons, and Grants.gov

Part I. Overview Information contains information about Key Dates and times. Applicants are encouraged to submit applications before the due date to ensure they have time to make any application corrections that might be necessary for successful submission. When a submission date falls on a weekend or Federal holiday , the application deadline is automatically extended to the next business day.

Organizations must submit applications to Grants.gov (the online portal to find and apply for grants across all Federal agencies). Applicants must then complete the submission process by tracking the status of the application in the eRA Commons , NIH’s electronic system for grants administration. NIH and Grants.gov systems check the application against many of the application instructions upon submission. Errors must be corrected and a changed/corrected application must be submitted to Grants.gov on or before the application due date and time. If a Changed/Corrected application is submitted after the deadline, the application will be considered late. Applications that miss the due date and time are subjected to the NIH Policy on Late Application Submission.

Applicants are responsible for viewing their application before the due date in the eRA Commons to ensure accurate and successful submission.

Information on the submission process and a definition of on-time submission are provided in the SF424 (R&R) Application Guide.

This initiative is not subject to intergovernmental review.

All NIH awards are subject to the terms and conditions, cost principles, and other considerations described in the NIH Grants Policy Statement .

Pre-award costs are allowable only as described in the NIH Grants Policy Statement .

Applications must be submitted electronically following the instructions described in the SF424 (R&R) Application Guide. Paper applications will not be accepted.

Applicants must complete all required registrations before the application due date. Section III. Eligibility Information contains information about registration.

For assistance with your electronic application or for more information on the electronic submission process, visit Applying Electronically . If you encounter a system issue beyond your control that threatens your ability to complete the submission process on-time, you must follow the Guidelines for Applicants Experiencing System Issues . For assistance with application submission, contact the Application Submission Contacts in Section VII .

Important reminders:

All PD(s)/PI(s) must include their eRA Commons ID in the Credential field of the Senior/Key Person Profile Component of the SF424(R&R) Application Package . Failure to register in the Commons and to include a valid PD/PI Commons ID in the credential field will prevent the successful submission of an electronic application to NIH. See Section III of this FOA for information on registration requirements.

The applicant organization must ensure that the DUNS number it provides on the application is the same number used in the organization’s profile in the eRA Commons and for the System for Award Management. Additional information may be found in the SF424 (R&R) Application Guide.

See more tips for avoiding common errors.

Upon receipt, applications will be evaluated for completeness and compliance with application instructions by the Center for Scientific Review, NIH. Applications that are incomplete or non-compliant will not be reviewed.

Applicants requesting $500,000 or more in direct costs in any year (excluding consortium F&A) must contact a Scientific/ Research Contact at least 6 weeks before submitting the application and follow the Policy on the Acceptance for Review of Unsolicited Applications that Request $500,000 or More in Direct Costs as described in the SF424 (R&R) Application Guide.

Applicants are required to follow the instructions for post-submission materials, as described in the policy . Any instructions provided here are in addition to the instructions in the policy.

Only the review criteria described below will be considered in the review process. As part of the NIH mission , all applications submitted to the NIH in support of biomedical and behavioral research are evaluated for scientific and technical merit through the NIH peer review system.

In addition, for applications involving clinical trials

A proposed Clinical Trial application may include study design, methods, and intervention that are not by themselves innovative but address important questions or unmet needs. Additionally, the results of the clinical trial may indicate that further clinical development of the intervention is unwarranted or lead to new avenues of scientific investigation.

Reviewers will provide an overall impact score to reflect their assessment of the likelihood for the project to exert a sustained, powerful influence on the research field(s) involved, in consideration of the following review criteria and additional review criteria (as applicable for the project proposed).

Reviewers will consider each of the review criteria below in the determination of scientific merit, and give a separate score for each. An application does not need to be strong in all categories to be judged likely to have major scientific impact. For example, a project that by its nature is not innovative may be essential to advance a field.

Does the project address an important problem or a critical barrier to progress in the field? Is there a strong scientific premise for the project? If the aims of the project are achieved, how will scientific knowledge, technical capability, and/or clinical practice be improved? How will successful completion of the aims change the concepts, methods, technologies, treatments, services, or preventative interventions that drive this field?

Are the scientific rationale and need for a clinical trial to test the proposed hypothesis or intervention well supported by preliminary data, clinical and/or preclinical studies, or information in the literature or knowledge of biological mechanisms? For trials focusing on clinical or public health endpoints, is this clinical trial necessary for testing the safety, efficacy or effectiveness of an intervention that could lead to a change in clinical practice, community behaviors or health care policy? For trials focusing on mechanistic, behavioral, physiological, biochemical, or other biomedical endpoints, is this trial needed to advance scientific understanding?

Are the PD(s)/PI(s), collaborators, and other researchers well suited to the project? If Early Stage Investigators or those in the early stages of independent careers, do they have appropriate experience and training? If established, have they demonstrated an ongoing record of accomplishments that have advanced their field(s)? If the project is collaborative or multi-PD/PI, do the investigators have complementary and integrated expertise; are their leadership approach, governance and organizational structure appropriate for the project?

With regard to the proposed leadership for the project, do the PD/PI(s) and key personnel have the expertise, experience, and ability to organize, manage and implement the proposed clinical trial and meet milestones and timelines? Do they have appropriate expertise in study coordination, data management and statistics? For a multicenter trial, is the organizational structure appropriate and does the application identify a core of potential center investigators and staffing for a coordinating center?

Does the application challenge and seek to shift current research or clinical practice paradigms by utilizing novel theoretical concepts, approaches or methodologies, instrumentation, or interventions? Are the concepts, approaches or methodologies, instrumentation, or interventions novel to one field of research or novel in a broad sense? Is a refinement, improvement, or new application of theoretical concepts, approaches or methodologies, instrumentation, or interventions proposed?

Does the design/research plan include innovative elements, as appropriate, that enhance its sensitivity, potential for information or potential to advance scientific knowledge or clinical practice?

Are the overall strategy, methodology, and analyses well-reasoned and appropriate to accomplish the specific aims of the project? Have the investigators presented strategies to ensure a robust and unbiased approach, as appropriate for the work proposed? Are potential problems, alternative strategies, and benchmarks for success presented? If the project is in the early stages of development, will the strategy establish feasibility and will particularly risky aspects be managed? Have the investigators presented adequate plans to address relevant biological variables, such as sex, for studies in vertebrate animals or human subjects?

If the project involves human subjects and/or NIH-defined clinical research, are the plans to address 1) the protection of human subjects from research risks, and 2) inclusion (or exclusion) of individuals on the basis of sex/gender, race, and ethnicity, as well as the inclusion or exclusion of children, justified in terms of the scientific goals and research strategy proposed?

Does the application adequately address the following, if applicable?

Study Design

Is the study design justified and appropriate to address primary and secondary outcome variable(s)/endpoints that will be clear, informative and relevant to the hypothesis being tested? Is the scientific rationale/premise of the study based on previously well-designed preclinical and/or clinical research? Given the methods used to assign participants and deliver interventions, is the study design adequately powered to answer the research question(s), test the proposed hypothesis/hypotheses, and provide interpretable results? Is the trial appropriately designed to conduct the research efficiently? Are the study populations (size, gender, age, demographic group), proposed intervention arms/dose, and duration of the trial, appropriate and well justified?

Are potential ethical issues adequately addressed? Is the process for obtaining informed consent or assent appropriate? Is the eligible population available? Are the plans for recruitment outreach, enrollment, retention, handling dropouts, missed visits, and losses to follow-up appropriate to ensure robust data collection? Are the planned recruitment timelines feasible and is the plan to monitor accrual adequate? Has the need for randomization (or not), masking (if appropriate), controls, and inclusion/exclusion criteria been addressed? Are differences addressed, if applicable, in the intervention effect due to sex/gender and race/ethnicity?

Are the plans to standardize, assure quality of, and monitor adherence to, the trial protocol and data collection or distribution guidelines appropriate? Is there a plan to obtain required study agent(s)? Does the application propose to use existing available resources, as applicable?

Data Management and Statistical Analysis

Are planned analyses and statistical approach appropriate for the proposed study design and methods used to assign participants and deliver interventions? Are the procedures for data management and quality control of data adequate at clinical site(s) or at center laboratories, as applicable? Have the methods for standardization of procedures for data management to assess the effect of the intervention and quality control been addressed? Is there a plan to complete data analysis within the proposed period of the award?

Will the scientific environment in which the work will be done contribute to the probability of success? Are the institutional support, equipment and other physical resources available to the investigators adequate for the project proposed? Will the project benefit from unique features of the scientific environment, subject populations, or collaborative arrangements?

If proposed, are the administrative, data coordinating, enrollment and laboratory/testing centers, appropriate for the trial proposed?

Does the application adequately address the capability and ability to conduct the trial at the proposed site(s) or centers? Are the plans to add or drop enrollment centers, as needed, appropriate?

If international site(s) is/are proposed, does the application adequately address the complexity of executing the clinical trial?

If multi-sites/centers, is there evidence of the ability of the individual site or center to: (1) enroll the proposed numbers; (2) adhere to the protocol; (3) collect and transmit data in an accurate and timely fashion; and, (4) operate within the proposed organizational structure?

As applicable for the project proposed, reviewers will evaluate the following additional items while determining scientific and technical merit, and in providing an overall impact score, but will not give separate scores for these items.

Study Timeline

Specific to applications proposing clinical trials

Is the study timeline described in detail, taking into account start-up activities, the anticipated rate of enrollment, and planned follow-up assessment? Is the projected timeline feasible and well justified? Does the project incorporate efficiencies and utilize existing resources (e.g., CTSAs, practice-based research networks, electronic medical records, administrative database, or patient registries) to increase the efficiency of participant enrollment and data collection, as appropriate?

Are potential challenges and corresponding solutions discussed (e.g., strategies that can be implemented in the event of enrollment shortfalls)?

For research that involves human subjects but does not involve one of the six categories of research that are exempt under 45 CFR Part 46, the committee will evaluate the justification for involvement of human subjects and the proposed protections from research risk relating to their participation according to the following five review criteria: 1) risk to subjects, 2) adequacy of protection against risks, 3) potential benefits to the subjects and others, 4) importance of the knowledge to be gained, and 5) data and safety monitoring for clinical trials.

For research that involves human subjects and meets the criteria for one or more of the six categories of research that are exempt under 45 CFR Part 46, the committee will evaluate: 1) the justification for the exemption, 2) human subjects involvement and characteristics, and 3) sources of materials. For additional information on review of the Human Subjects section, please refer to the Guidelines for the Review of Human Subjects .

When the proposed project involves human subjects and/or NIH-defined clinical research, the committee will evaluate the proposed plans for the inclusion (or exclusion) of individuals on the basis of sex/gender, race, and ethnicity, as well as the inclusion (or exclusion) of children to determine if it is justified in terms of the scientific goals and research strategy proposed. For additional information on review of the Inclusion section, please refer to the Guidelines for the Review of Inclusion in Clinical Research .

The committee will evaluate the involvement of live vertebrate animals as part of the scientific assessment according to the following criteria: (1) description of proposed procedures involving animals, including species, strains, ages, sex, and total number to be used; (2) justifications for the use of animals versus alternative models and for the appropriateness of the species proposed; (3) interventions to minimize discomfort, distress, pain and injury; and (4) justification for euthanasia method if NOT consistent with the AVMA Guidelines for the Euthanasia of Animals. Reviewers will assess the use of chimpanzees as they would any other application proposing the use of vertebrate animals. For additional information on review of the Vertebrate Animals section, please refer to the Worksheet for Review of the Vertebrate Animal Section .

Reviewers will assess whether materials or procedures proposed are potentially hazardous to research personnel and/or the environment, and if needed, determine whether adequate protection is proposed.

For Resubmissions, the committee will evaluate the application as now presented, taking into consideration the responses to comments from the previous scientific review group and changes made to the project.

For Revisions, the committee will consider the appropriateness of the proposed expansion of the scope of the project. If the Revision application relates to a specific line of investigation presented in the original application that was not recommended for approval by the committee, then the committee will consider whether the responses to comments from the previous scientific review group are adequate and whether substantial changes are clearly evident.

As applicable for the project proposed, reviewers will consider each of the following items, but will not give scores for these items, and should not consider them in providing an overall impact score.

Reviewers will assess whether the project presents special opportunities for furthering research programs through the use of unusual talent, resources, populations, or environmental conditions that exist in other countries and either are not readily available in the United States or augment existing U.S. resources.

Reviewers will assess the information provided in this section of the application, including 1) the Select Agent(s) to be used in the proposed research, 2) the registration status of all entities where Select Agent(s) will be used, 3) the procedures that will be used to monitor possession use and transfer of Select Agent(s), and 4) plans for appropriate biosafety, biocontainment, and security of the Select Agent(s).

Reviewers will comment on whether the following Resource Sharing Plans, or the rationale for not sharing the following types of resources, are reasonable: (1) Data Sharing Plan ; (2) Sharing Model Organisms ; and (3) Genomic Data Sharing Plan (GDS) .

For projects involving key biological and/or chemical resources, reviewers will comment on the brief plans proposed for identifying and ensuring the validity of those resources.

Reviewers will consider whether the budget and the requested period of support are fully justified and reasonable in relation to the proposed research.

Applications will be evaluated for scientific and technical merit by (an) appropriate Scientific Review Group(s), convened by the Center for Scientific Review (CSR), in accordance with NIH peer review policy and procedures , using the stated review criteria . Assignment to a Scientific Review Group will be shown in the eRA Commons.

As part of the scientific peer review, all applications:

May undergo a selection process in which only those applications deemed to have the highest scientific and technical merit (generally the top half of applications under review) will be discussed and assigned an overall impact score.
Will receive a written critique.

Applications will be assigned on the basis of established PHS referral guidelines to the appropriate NIH Institute or Center. Applications will compete for available funds with all other recommended applications . Following initial peer review, recommended applications will receive a second level of review by the appropriate national Advisory Council or Board. The following will be considered in making funding decisions:

Scientific and technical merit of the proposed project as determined by scientific peer review.
Availability of funds.
Relevance of the proposed project to program priorities.

After the peer review of the application is completed, the PD/PI will be able to access his or her Summary Statement (written critique) via the eRA Commons . Refer to Part 1 for dates for peer review, advisory council review, and earliest start date.

Information regarding the disposition of applications is available in the NIH Grants Policy Statement .

If the application is under consideration for funding, NIH will request "just-in-time" information from the applicant as described in the NIH Grants Policy Statement .

A formal notification in the form of a Notice of Award (NoA) will be provided to the applicant organization for successful applications. The NoA signed by the grants management officer is the authorizing document and will be sent via email to the grantee’s business official.

Awardees must comply with any funding restrictions described in Section IV.5. Funding Restrictions . Selection of an application for award is not an authorization to begin performance. Any costs incurred before receipt of the NoA are at the recipient's risk. These costs may be reimbursed only to the extent considered allowable pre-award costs.

Any application awarded in response to this FOA will be subject to terms and conditions found on the Award Conditions and Information for NIH Grants website. This includes any recent legislation and policy applicable to awards that is highlighted on this website.

Individual awards are based on the application submitted to, and as approved by, the NIH and are subject to the IC-specific terms and conditions identified in the NoA.

ClinicalTrials.gov: If an award provides for one or more clinical trials. By law (Title VIII, Section 801 of Public Law 110-85), the "responsible party" must register and submit results information for certain applicable clinical trials on the ClinicalTrials.gov Protocol Registration and Results System Information Website (https://register.clinicaltrials.gov). NIH expects registration of all trials whether required under the law or not. For more information, see http://grants.nih.gov/ClinicalTrials_fdaaa/

Institutional Review Board or Independent Ethics Committee Approval: Grantee institutions must ensure that the application as well as all protocols are reviewed by their IRB or IEC. To help ensure the safety of participants enrolled in NIH-funded studies, the awardee must provide NIH copies of documents related to all major changes in the status of ongoing protocols.

Data and Safety Monitoring Requirements: The NIH policy for data and safety monitoring requires oversight and monitoring of all NIH-conducted or -supported human biomedical and behavioral intervention studies (clinical trials) to ensure the safety of participants and the validity and integrity of the data. Further information concerning these requirements is found at http://grants.nih.gov/grants/policy/hs/data_safety.htm and in the application instructions (SF424 (R&R) and PHS 398).

Investigational New Drug or Investigational Device Exemption Requirements: Consistent with federal regulations, clinical research projects involving the use of investigational therapeutics, vaccines, or other medical interventions (including licensed products and devices for a purpose other than that for which they were licensed) in humans under a research protocol must be performed under a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) investigational new drug (IND) or investigational device exemption (IDE).

All NIH grant and cooperative agreement awards include the NIH Grants Policy Statement as part of the NoA. For these terms of award, see the NIH Grants Policy Statement Part II: Terms and Conditions of NIH Grant Awards, Subpart A: General and Part II: Terms and Conditions of NIH Grant Awards, Subpart B: Terms and Conditions for Specific Types of Grants, Grantees, and Activities . More information is provided at Award Conditions and Information for NIH Grants .

Recipients of federal financial assistance (FFA) from HHS must administer their programs in compliance with federal civil rights law. This means that recipients of HHS funds must ensure equal access to their programs without regard to a person’s race, color, national origin, disability, age and, in some circumstances, sex and religion. This includes ensuring your programs are accessible to persons with limited English proficiency. HHS recognizes that research projects are often limited in scope for many reasons that are nondiscriminatory, such as the principal investigator’s scientific interest, funding limitations, recruitment requirements, and other considerations. Thus, criteria in research protocols that target or exclude certain populations are warranted where nondiscriminatory justifications establish that such criteria are appropriate with respect to the health or safety of the subjects, the scientific study design, or the purpose of the research.

For additional guidance regarding how the provisions apply to NIH grant programs, please contact the Scientific/Research Contact that is identified in Section VII under Agency Contacts of this FOA. HHS provides general guidance to recipients of FFA on meeting their legal obligation to take reasonable steps to provide meaningful access to their programs by persons with limited English proficiency. Please see https://www.hhs.gov/civil-rights/for-individuals/special-topics/limited-english-proficiency/index.html. The HHS Office for Civil Rights also provides guidance on complying with civil rights laws enforced by HHS. Please see http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/civilrights/understanding/section1557/index.html ; and https://www.hhs.gov/civil-rights/for-providers/laws-regulations-guidance/index.html . Recipients of FFA also have specific legal obligations for serving qualified individuals with disabilities. Please see http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/civilrights/understanding/disability/index.html . Please contact the HHS Office for Civil Rights for more information about obligations and prohibitions under federal civil rights laws at https://www.hhs.gov/ocr/about-us/contact-us/index.html or call 1-800-368-1019 or TDD 1-800-537-7697. Also note it is an HHS Departmental goal to ensure access to quality, culturally competent care, including long-term services and supports, for vulnerable populations. For further guidance on providing culturally and linguistically appropriate services, recipients should review the National Standards for Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services in Health and Health Care at http://minorityhealth.hhs.gov/omh/browse.aspx?lvl=2&lvlid=53 .

In accordance with the statutory provisions contained in Section 872 of the Duncan Hunter National Defense Authorization Act of Fiscal Year 2009 (Public Law 110-417), NIH awards will be subject to the Federal Awardee Performance and Integrity Information System (FAPIIS) requirements. FAPIIS requires Federal award making officials to review and consider information about an applicant in the designated integrity and performance system (currently FAPIIS) prior to making an award. An applicant, at its option, may review information in the designated integrity and performance systems accessible through FAPIIS and comment on any information about itself that a Federal agency previously entered and is currently in FAPIIS. The Federal awarding agency will consider any comments by the applicant, in addition to other information in FAPIIS, in making a judgement about the applicant’s integrity, business ethics, and record of performance under Federal awards when completing the review of risk posed by applicants as described in 45 CFR Part 75.205 Federal awarding agency review of risk posed by applicants. This provision will apply to all NIH grants and cooperative agreements except fellowships.

Cooperative Agreement Terms and Conditions of Award

When multiple years are involved, awardees will be required to submit the Research Performance Progress Report (RPPR) annually and financial statements as required in the NIH Grants Policy Statement.

A final RPPR, invention statement, and the expenditure data portion of the Federal Financial Report are required for closeout of an award, as described in the NIH Grants Policy Statement .

The Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 (Transparency Act), includes a requirement for awardees of Federal grants to report information about first-tier subawards and executive compensation under Federal assistance awards issued in FY2011 or later. All awardees of applicable NIH grants and cooperative agreements are required to report to the Federal Subaward Reporting System (FSRS) available at www.fsrs.gov on all subawards over $25,000. See the NIH Grants Policy Statement for additional information on this reporting requirement.

In accordance with the regulatory requirements provided at 45 CFR 75.113 and Appendix XII to 45 CFR Part 75, recipients that have currently active Federal grants, cooperative agreements, and procurement contracts from all Federal awarding agencies with a cumulative total value greater than $10,000,000 for any period of time during the period of performance of a Federal award, must report and maintain the currency of information reported in the System for Award Management (SAM) about civil, criminal, and administrative proceedings in connection with the award or performance of a Federal award that reached final disposition within the most recent five-year period. The recipient must also make semiannual disclosures regarding such proceedings. Proceedings information will be made publicly available in the designated integrity and performance system (currently FAPIIS). This is a statutory requirement under section 872 of Public Law 110-417, as amended (41 U.S.C. 2313). As required by section 3010 of Public Law 111-212, all information posted in the designated integrity and performance system on or after April 15, 2011, except past performance reviews required for Federal procurement contracts, will be publicly available. Full reporting requirements and procedures are found in Appendix XII to 45 CFR Part 75 Award Term and Conditions for Recipient Integrity and Performance Matters.

We encourage inquiries concerning this funding opportunity and welcome the opportunity to answer questions from potential applicants.

eRA Service Desk (Questions regarding ASSIST, eRA Commons registration, submitting and tracking an application, documenting system problems that threaten submission by the due date, post submission issues) Finding Help Online: http://grants.nih.gov/support/ (preferred method of contact) Telephone: 301-402-7469 or 866-504-9552 (Toll Free)

Grants.gov Customer Support (Questions regarding Grants.gov registration and submission, downloading forms and application packages) Contact Center Telephone: 800-518-4726 Email: [email protected]

GrantsInfo (Questions regarding application instructions and process, finding NIH grant resources) Email: [email protected] (preferred method of contact) Telephone: 301-945-7573

Regina Bures, PhD Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Telephone: 301-496-9485 Email: [email protected]

Liz Perruccio, PhD National Cancer Institute (NCI) Telephone: 240 276-6178 Email: [email protected]

Tina Gatlin, PhD National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) Telephone: 301-402-2851 Email: [email protected]

Melissa Gerald, PhD National Institute on Aging (NIA) Telephone: 301-451-4503 Email: [email protected]

Robert Freeman, PhD National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) Telephone: 301-443-8820 Email: [email protected]

Phillip Renzulo, PhD National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Telephone: 240-627-3041 Email: [email protected]

Victoria Cargill, MD Office of Research on Women’s Health (ORWH) Telephone: 301-402-1770 Email: [email protected]

Denise Stredrick, PhD Office of Research on Women’s Health (ORWH) Telephone: 301-402-1770 Email: [email protected]

Karen L. Parker, PhD, MSW Sexual & Gender Minority Research Office (SGMRO) Telephone: 301-451-2055 Email: [email protected]

Tamara Lewis Johnson, MPH, MBA National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Telephone: 301-594-7963 Email: [email protected]

Alberto Rivera-Rentas, PhD National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) Telephone: 301-402-6251 Email: [email protected]

Jennifer Alvidrez, PhD National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) Telephone: 301-594-9567 Email: [email protected]

Carol Shreffler, PhD National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) Telephone: 919-541-1445 Email: [email protected]

Dr. Rebecca Henry National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR) Telephone: 301-594-5976 Email: [email protected]

Paul Gaist, Ph.D., M.P.H. Office of AIDS Research (OAR) Telephone: (301) 435-7577 Email: [email protected]

Examine your eRA Commons account for review assignment and contact information (information appears two weeks after the submission due date).

Ted Williams Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Telephone: 301-326-6450 Email: [email protected]

Crystal Wolfrey National Cancer Institute (NCI) Telephone: 240-276-6277 Email: [email protected]

Deanna Ingersoll National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) Telephone: (301) 402-0733 Email: [email protected]

John Bladen National Institute on Aging (NIA) Telephone: 301-402-7730 Email: [email protected]

Judy Fox National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) Telephone: 301-443-4704 Email: [email protected]

Ann Devine National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Telephone: 240-669-2988 Email: [email protected]

Tamara Kees National Institute on Mental Health (NIMH) Telephone: 301-443-8811 Email: [email protected]

Chris Myers National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) Telephone: 301-435-0713 Email: [email protected]

Priscilla Grant National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) Telephone: 301-594-8412 Email: [email protected]

Molly Puente, PhD National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) Telephone: 919-541-1373 Email: [email protected]

Kelli Oster National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR) Telephone: 301-594-2177 Email: [email protected]

Recently issued trans-NIH policy notices may affect your application submission. A full list of policy notices published by NIH is provided in the NIH Guide for Grants and Contracts . All awards are subject to the terms and conditions, cost principles, and other considerations described in the NIH Grants Policy Statement .

Awards are made under the authorization of Sections 301 and 405 of the Public Health Service Act as amended (42 USC 241 and 284) and under Federal Regulations 42 CFR Part 52 and 45 CFR Part 75.

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FACT SHEET: Biden- ⁠ Harris Administration Advances Equality and Visibility for Transgender Americans

Today, the Biden-Harris Administration recognizes Transgender Day of Visibility, an annual celebration of the resilience, achievements, and joy of transgender people in the United States and around the world. Every American deserves the freedom to be themselves. But far too many transgender Americans still face systemic barriers, discrimination, and acts of violence. Today, the Administration once again condemns the proliferation of dangerous anti-transgender legislative attacks that have been introduced and passed in state legislatures around the country. The evidence is clear that these types of bills stigmatize and worsen the well-being and mental health of transgender kids, and they put loving and supportive families across the country at risk of discrimination and harassment. As the President has said, these bills are government overreach at its worst, they are un-American, and they must stop. Transgender people are some of the bravest people in our nation. But nobody should have to be brave just to be themselves. Today, the Biden Administration announced new actions to support the mental health of transgender children, remove barriers that transgender people face accessing critical government services, and improve the visibility of transgender people in our nation’s data.

Reinforcing federal protections for transgender kids. The Justice Department announced today that it has issued a letter to all state attorneys general reminding them of federal constitutional and statutory provisions that protect transgender youth against discrimination, including when those youth seek gender-affirming care. Advancing dignity, respect, and self-determination for transgender people by improving the traveler experience. For far too long, transgender, non-binary, and gender non-conforming Americans have faced significant barriers to travelling safely and many have not had their gender identity respected as they travel within the United States and around the world. To create a safer and more dignified travel experience, the Biden Administration is announcing the following changes.

The Department of State is announcing that beginning on April 11, 2022, all U.S. citizens will be able select an “X” as their gender marker on their U.S. passport application. This is a major step in delivering on the President’s commitment to expand access to accurate identification documents for transgender and non-binary Americans. Information on how to apply will be available at travel.state.gov/gender .
Implementing enhanced screening technology. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) will soon begin updating its Advanced Imaging Technology (AIT) body scanners with new technology that will increase security and efficiency by reducing false alarm rates and pat-downs for the traveling public. By replacing the current, gender-based system with this more accurate technology, TSA will improve the customer experience of transgender travelers who have previously been required to undergo additional screening due to alarms in sensitive areas. This new technology will help to improve the experience of travelers, particularly those who are transgender and non-binary travelers. TSA will begin deploying this new technology in airports throughout the country later this year.
Expanding airline partnerships to enhance the overall travel experience. TSA is working closely with air carriers across the nation to promote the use and acceptance of the “X” gender marker to ensure more efficient and accurate passenger processing. As of March 31st, two major domestic air carriers already offer a third gender marker option in their travel-reservation systems, with a third air carrier planning to offer this option in the Fall of 2022.
Streamlining identity validation. TSA has updated its Standard Operating Procedures to remove gender considerations when validating a traveler’s identification at airport security checkpoints. This ensures that TSOs can accurately and efficiently validate each traveler’s identity while avoiding unnecessary delays.
Updating TSA PreCheck and CBP Trusted Traveler Programs enrollment to include “X” gender markers. The Department of Homeland Security is beginning the process of adding “X” gender markers options in Trusted Traveler programs and the TSA PreCheck program to enhance access for transgender, non-binary, and gender non-conforming travelers to these programs.

Providing resources for transgender kids and their families. Transgender children are put at higher risk of attempted suicide or mental health challenges when they face bullying, rejection, or denial of health care. The Biden Administration is releasing several new resources to help transgender children and their parents thrive:

Providing mental health resources for transgender youth. In recent months, multiple states have removed critical information about mental health resources for LGBTQI+ youth from official state websites. Transgender youth often face significant barriers in accessing supportive resources, and are at greater risk of attempted suicide. In response, the Department of Health and Human Services released a new website that offers resources for transgender and LGBTQI+ youth, their parents, and providers. These resources include best practices for affirming an LGBTQI+ child, and information about suicide prevention services.
Expanding trainings to support transgender and nonbinary students in schools. The Office of Safe and Supportive Schools in the Department of Education will offer new training for schools with experts and school leaders who will discuss the challenges faced by many transgender and nonbinary students and strategies and actions for providing support.
Confirming the positive impact of gender affirming care on youth mental health. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) has posted LGBTQI+ Youth – Like All Americans, They Deserve Evidence-Based Care , in which Miriam Delphin-Rittmon, Ph.D., HHS Assistant Secretary for Mental Health and Substance Use and the leader of SAMHSA, shares how to engage LGBTQI+ youth, the evidence behind the positive effects of gender affirming care, and available resources for LGBTQI+ youth, their families, providers, community organizations, and government agencies.
Confirming that gender-affirming care is trauma-informed care. The National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN), which is administered by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, is releasing new information for providers confirming that providing gender-affirming care is neither child maltreatment nor malpractice.
Providing resources on the importance of gender affirming care for children and adolescents. The Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health has developed a resource to inform parents and guardians, educators, and other persons supporting children and adolescents with information on what is gender-affirming care and why it is important to transgender, nonbinary, and other gender expansive young people’s well-being.

Improving access to federal services and benefits for transgender Americans. With support and coordination from the U.S. Digital Service, federal agencies are removing barriers to access government services by improving the customer experience of transgender, non-binary, and gender non-conforming Americans:

Accessing retirement savings. The Social Security Administration is announcing that it is removing the requirement that transgender people show proof of identity such as doctor’s notes in order to update their gender information in their social security record by the fall of 2022. This will significantly improve transgender individuals’ experience in accessing their retirement benefits, obtaining health care, and applying for jobs.
Filing an employment discrimination complaint . The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is announcing that it will promote greater equity and inclusion for members of the transgender community by giving individuals the option to select an “X” gender marker during the voluntary self-identification questions that are part of the intake process for filing a charge of discrimination.
Applying for federal student aid. The Department of Education plans to propose next month that the 2023-24 FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) will include an opportunity for applicants to indicate their gender identity as well as their race/ethnicity when applying for federal financial aid. The questions, which will be posted for public comment, will be in a survey that accompanies the application. This privacy-protected information would help to inform the Department about possible barriers students, including transgender and nonbinary students, face in the financial aid process.
Visiting the White House. The White House Office of Management and Administration is announcing that it is beginning the process of implementing updates that will improve the White House campus entry process for transgender, gender non-conforming, and non-binary visitors by adding an “X” gender marker option to the White House Worker and Visitor Entry System (WAVES) system. This change will ensure that transgender, non-binary, and gender nonconforming people can visit the People’s House in a manner that respects and affirms their gender identity.

Advancing inclusion and visibility in federal data. In too many critical federal surveys and data systems, transgender, non-binary, and gender non-conforming people are not fully reflected. To improve visibility for transgender Americans, agencies are announcing new actions to expand the collection and use of sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) data.

The White House announced that the President’s proposed Fiscal Year 23 budget includes $10 million in funding for additional critical research on how to best add questions about sexual orientation and gender identity to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, one of our nation’s largest and most important surveys of American households. This data collection will help the federal government better serve the LGBTQI+ community by providing valuable information on their jobs, educational attainment, home ownership, and more.
The Department of Health and Human Services has released the findings of the federal government’s first-ever user research testing conducted with transgender Americans on how they want to see themselves reflected on Federal IDs. This groundbreaking user research by the Collaborating Center for Question Design and Evaluation Research (CCQDER) at the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) directly informed the State Department’s adopted definition of the “X” gender marker.
The Department of Health and Human Services has released a comprehensive new consensus study on Measuring Sex, Gender Identity, and Sexual Orientation. This work, commissioned by the National Institutes of Health and carried out by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, will inform additional data collections and future research in how to best serve LGBTQI+ Americans.

These announcements build on the Biden-Harris Administration’s historic work to advance equality for transgender Americans since taking office, including: Combatting legislative attacks on transgender kids at the state level.

Condemning anti-transgender bills. The President has consistently made clear that legislative attacks against transgender youth are un-American, and are bullying disguised as legislation. In his March, 2022 State of the Union Address, the President said, “The onslaught of state laws targeting transgender Americans and their families is wrong. As I said last year, especially to our younger transgender Americans, I will always have your back as your President, so you can be yourself and reach your God-given potential.” The White House has also hosted listening sessions with transgender youth and advocates in states across the country that are impacted by anti-transgender legislative attacks.
Reaffirming that transgender children have the right to access gender-affirming health care. In March, following state actions that aim to target parents and doctors who provide gender-affirming care to transgender children with child abuse investigations, the Department of Health and Human Services took multiple actions to support transgender children in receiving the care they need and promised to use every tool available to protect LGTBQI+ children and support their families.
Department of Justice statements of interest and amicus briefs. The Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division has filed Statements of Interest and amicus briefs in several matters to protect the constitutional rights of transgender individuals, including in Brandt v. Rutledge , a lawsuit challenging legislation restricting access to gender-affirming care for transgender youth; B.P.J. v. West Virginia State Board of Education , a lawsuit challenging legislation restricting participation of transgender students in school sports; Corbitt v. Taylor , a lawsuit challenging legislation restricting the ability to change gender markers on state driver’s licenses; and Adams v. School Board of St. John’s County , which involves the right of a transgender boy to use the boys’ restroom at his school.

Advancing civil rights protections for transgender Americans

Fighting for passage of the Equality Act. President Biden continues to call on the Senate to pass the Equality Act, legislation which will provide long overdue federal civil rights protections to transgender and LGBTQI+ Americans and their families. As the White House has said , passing the Equality Act is key to addressing the epidemic levels of violence and discrimination that transgender people face. The Administration’s first Statement of Administration Policy was in support of the Equality Act, and the White House has convened national leaders to discuss the importance of the legislation.
Signing one of the most comprehensive Executive Orders on LGBTQI+ rights in history. Within hours of taking office, President Biden signed an Executive Order which established that it is the official policy of the Biden-Harris Administration to prevent and combat discrimination against LGBTQI+ individuals, and to fully enforce civil rights laws to prevent discrimination on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation. This Executive Order is one of the most consequential policies for LGBTQI+ Americans ever signed by a U.S. President. As a result of that Order, the Departments of Health and Human Services , Housing and Urban Development , Education , Consumer Financial Protection Bureau , and Justice have announced that they are expanding non-discrimination protections for transgender people in health care, housing, education, credit and lending services, and community safety programs.

Supporting transgender service members and veterans

Reversing the discriminatory ban on transgender servicemembers. In his first week in office, President Biden signed an Executive Order reversing the ban on openly transgender servicemembers serving in the Armed Forces, enabling all qualified Americans to serve their country in uniform. President Biden believes that an inclusive military strengthens our national security As a result of his Executive Order, the Department of Defense issued new policies which prohibit discrimination against transgender servicemembers, provide a path for transgender servicemembers to access gender-affirming medical care, and require that all transgender servicemembers are treated with dignity and respect.
Supporting transgender veterans. To ensure that transgender veterans are treated with dignity and respect, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) launched an agency-wide review of its policies and practices to ensure that transgender veterans and employees do not face discrimination on the basis of gender identity or expression. In June, VA also announced that it is beginning the regulatory process to remove restrictions that prevent transgender veterans from accessing the gender-affirming care they need and deserve.

Responding to the crisis of anti-transgender violence and advancing safety

Establishing a White House-led interagency working group on anti-transgender violence. To address the crisis of anti-transgender stigma and violence, during Pride Month in 2021 the White House established the first Interagency Working Group on Safety, Opportunity, and Inclusion for Transgender and Gender Diverse Individuals. The Working Group is co-led by the White House Domestic Policy Council and Gender Policy Council. To inform the priorities of the Working Group, throughout the fall of 2021 the White House convened 15 historic listening sessions with transgender and gender diverse people, advocates, and civil rights leaders from across the country and around the world, including a White House roundtable with transgender women of color .
Releasing a White House report uplifting the voices of transgender people on gender-based violence and discrimination. On Transgender Day of Remembrance, the White House released a report sharing the perspectives from White House listening sessions, uplifting the voices and advocacy of transgender people throughout the country, and highlighting over 45 key, early actions the Biden-Harris Administration is taking to address the root causes of anti-transgender violence, discrimination, and denial of economic opportunity.
Department of Justice civil rights enforcement actions. On September 14, 2021, the Department of Justice announced that it was launching a statewide civil investigation into Georgia’s prisons, which includes a focus on sexual abuse of transgender prisoners by other prisoners and staff. The Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division and U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Puerto Rico also obtained a federal indictment charging three men with hate crimes for assaulting a transgender woman because of her gender identity.
Ensuring non-discrimination protections in community safety programs. The Department of Justice issued a Memorandum from the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights regarding the application of Bostock v. Clayton County to the nondiscrimination provisions of the Safe Streets Act, the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act, the Victims of Crime Act, and the Violence Against Women Act to strengthen non-discrimination protections for transgender and LGBTQI+ individuals in key community safety programs.
Strengthening protections for transgender individuals who are incarcerated. In January 2022 the Bureau of Prisons revised its manual on serving transgender offenders , improving access to gender-affirming care and access to facility placements that align with an inmate’s gender identity.
Honoring those lost to violence. The White House and the Second Gentleman of the United States hosted a first of its kind vigil in the Diplomatic Room of the White House to honor the lives of transgender and gender diverse people killed in 2021, and the countless transgender and gender diverse people who face brutal violence, harassment, and discrimination in the United States and around the world. The President also released a statement honoring the transgender people who lost their lives to violence.
Advancing safety and justice for transgender and Two-Spirit Indigenous people. LGBTQI+ Native Americans and people who identify as transgender or “Two-Spirit” are often the targets of violent crimes. On November 15, 2021, President Biden signed an Executive Order on Improving Public Safety and Criminal Justice for Native Americans and Addressing the Crisis of Missing or Murdered Indigenous People. The Executive Order directs federal agencies to work hand in hand with Tribal Nations and Tribal partners to build safe and healthy Tribal communities to address the crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous People, including LGBTQI+ and “Two-Spirit” Native Americans.

Advancing health equity and expanding access to gender-affirming health care to support transgender patients

Protecting transgender patients from health care discrimination. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that it would interpret and enforce section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act’s prohibition on discrimination on the basis of sex in certain health programs to prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation.
Advancing gender-affirming care as an essential health benefit. In 2021, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) approved the first ever application from a state to add additional gender-affirming care benefits to a state’s essential health benefit benchmark plan.
Advancing health equity research on gender-affirming care. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced that it will increase funding for research on gender-affirming procedures to further develop the evidence base for improved standards of care. Research priorities include a more thorough investigation and characterization of the short- and long-term outcomes on physical and mental health associated with gender-affirming care.
Ending the HIV crisis among transgender and gender diverse communities. In December, 2021, in recognition of World AIDS Day, the White House Office of National AIDS Policy released a revised National HIV/AIDS Strategy which now identifies transgender and gender diverse communities as a priority population in the federal government’s strategy to end the HIV epidemic.
Advancing access to gender-affirming care through Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program. The Health Resources and Services Administration announced that it has released a letter encouraging Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program service providers to provide access to gender affirming care and treatment services to transgender and gender diverse individuals with HIV. The letter reaffirms the importance of providing culturally-affirming health care and social services as a key component to improving the lives of transgender people with HIV.
Ensuring transgender patients can access birth control. In 2021 HHS issued a final rule to strengthen the Title X family planning program, fulfilling the Biden-Harris Administration’s commitment to restore access to equitable, affordable, client-centered, quality family planning services. The rule requires family planning projects to provide inclusive care to LGBTQI+ persons. Additionally, the rule prohibits discrimination against any client based on sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, sex characteristics, or marital status.

Supporting transgender students and their families

Ensuring educational environments are free from sex discrimination and protecting LGBTQI+ students from sexual harassment. President Biden signed an Executive Order recommitting the Federal Government to guarantee educational environments free from sex discrimination, including discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. The Executive Order charged the Department of Education with reviewing the significant rates at which students who identify as LGBTQ+ are subject to sexual harassment, including sexual violence. The Department of Education has announced that it intends to propose amendments to its Title IX regulations this year.
Protecting the rights of transgender and gender diverse students. The Department of Education has affirmed that federal civil rights laws protect all students, including transgender and other LGBTQI+ students, from discrimination. The Department published a notice in the Federal Register announcing that it interprets Title IX’s statutory prohibition on sex discrimination as encompassing discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
Department of Justice memorandum on Title IX. The Department of Justice issued a memorandum regarding the application of Bostock to Title IX.
Speaking directly to transgender students. The Department of Justice, Department of Education, and Department of Health and Human Services issued a joint back to school message for transgender youth.
Outreach and education to transgender and gender diverse students and their families. The Department of Education has published fact sheets and other resources showing the federal government’s support for transgender students, highlighting the ways schools can support students, reminding schools of their duty to investigate and address harassment based on sexual orientation or gender identity, and informing students how they can assert their rights and file complaints.
Advancing research to address the harms of so-called conversion therapy. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) announced that it will update its 2015 publication Ending Conversion Therapy: Supporting and Affirming LGBTQ Youth to reflect the latest research and state of the field.

Promoting fair housing and ending homelessness for transgender Americans

Advancing fair housing protections on the basis of gender identity. In February 2021 the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced that it would administer and enforce the Fair Housing Act to prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation.
Ensuring safety and access to services for transgender people experiencing homelessness. In April, HUD withdrew the previous administration’s proposed “Shelter Rule,” which would have allowed for federally funded discrimination against transgender people who seek shelter housing. By withdrawing the previous administration’s proposed rule, the agency has restored protections for transgender people to access shelter in line with their gender identity. HUD has also released new tools for recipients to ensure compliance with these requirements in shelters and other facility settings.

Advancing economic opportunity and protections for transgender workers

Ensuring nondiscrimination protections for transgender and gender diverse workers. In November 2021, the Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs proposed to rescind the agency’s 2020 rule “Implementing Legal Requirements Regarding the Equal Opportunity Clause’s Religious Exemption,” an important step toward protecting workers from discrimination while safeguarding principles of religious freedom.
Ensuring equal access to the workforce development system. The Department of Labor is enforcing discrimination prohibitions in workforce development programs funded by the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, protecting workers from discrimination based on their gender identity or transgender status.

Advancing gender equity and transgender equality at home and around the world

Advancing transgender equality in U.S. foreign policy and foreign assistance. In line with the Presidential Memorandum on Advancing the Human Rights of LGBTQI+ Persons Around the World , the United States is making significant investments to uphold dignity, equality and respect for transgender persons globally. For example, USAID supports the Global Barometer for Transgender Rights and the LGBT Global Acceptance Index which track progress and setbacks to protecting transgender lives around the world. The Department of Health and Human Services through the United States President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief supports inclusive health care services for transgender individuals, enabling health clinics to provide care to the transgender community. And through the Department of State’s Global Equality Fund , local transgender rights organizations receive support to document human rights violations and provide critical legal assistance to community members.
Establishing the White House Gender Policy Council to Advance Gender Equity and Equality. President Biden signed an Executive Order establishing the White House Gender Policy Council to advance gender equity and equality across the whole of the government, including by addressing barriers faced by LGBTQ+ people, in particular transgender women and girls, across our country.

Supporting transgender leaders and public servants

Making the Federal government a model employer for transgender public servants. President Biden signed an Executive Order which takes historic new steps to ensure the Federal government is a model employer for all employees – including transgender, gender non-conforming, and non-binary employees. The Executive Order charges agencies with building inclusive cultures for transgender employees by: expanding the availability of gender-neutral facilities in Federal buildings; ensuring that employee services support transgender employees who wish to legally, medically or socially transition; advancing the use of non-binary gender markers and pronouns in Federal employment processes; and expanding access to gender-affirming care and inclusive health benefits.
Appointing historic transgender leaders. The Biden-Harris Administration includes barrier-breaking LGBTQI+ leaders, including Assistant Secretary for Health Dr. Rachel Levine, who is the first openly transgender person ever confirmed by the U.S. Senate. In October, she was also named a four-star admiral in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, becoming the first openly transgender person to hold that rank in any of the country’s uniformed services. Over 14 percent of Biden-Harris Administration appointees identify as LGBTQI+.

Advancing visibility for transgender Americans

Issuing the First White House Proclamation for Transgender Day of Visibility. On March 31, 2021 President Biden became the first U.S. President to issue a proclamation commemorating Transgender Day of Visibility.
Hosting a White House Virtual Convening on Transgender Equality. In June, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki hosted a first-of-its-kind national conversation on equality for transgender, gender non-conforming, and non-binary Americans.
Releasing a toolkit on equality and inclusion for transgender Americans. The White House released a new toolkit with best practices for advancing inclusion, opportunity, and safety for transgender Americans.
Establishing a National Pulse Memorial. On June 25, 2021, President Biden signed H.R. 49 into law to designate the National Pulse Memorial. As the President acknowledged in his statement on the fifth anniversary of the Pulse nightclub shooting, we must acknowledge gun violence’s particular impact on LGBTQ+ communities across our nation, and we must drive out hate and inequities that contribute to the epidemic of violence and murder against transgender women – especially transgender women of color. As the President has said, Pulse Nightclub is hallowed ground.

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Philanthropy Women

A Home for News and Conversation on Women Donors

Find Funds Now: 355 Funders for International Gender Equality

The Philanthropy Women Gender Equality Funder Database is a unique data hub that aggregates over 700 listings of foundations, funds, and grantmakers. Our database provides contact and querying information as well as real-time news from the funders (when available) via live Twitter feed. All grantmakers in the PW Funder Database are doing gender equality work. The funders are listed across four categories: U.S., International, Corporate, and Family Foundations. The database is also searchable by keyword. Today, we are sharing a snapshot of 45 funders on our International Funders list.

International Funders for Gender Equality

Bushrod H. Campbell and Adah F. Hall Charity Fund
Calala Fondo de Mujeres
C. Moore Media
Catapult Foundation
Caterpillar Foundation
Central American Women’s Fund / Fondo Centroamericano de Mujeres (FCAM)
Fondation CHANEL
Channel Foundation
Cherie Blair Foundation for Women
Chrest Foundation
Chow Tai Fook Charity Foundation
The Circle NGO
Circle of Sisterhood Foundation
Clara Lionel Foundation
Prince Claus Foundation
Clean Cooking Alliance (CCA)
Clif Bar Family Foundation
CODE Research Grants
Comic Relief
COMO Foundation
Compton Foundation
Cordes Foundation
Evan Cornish Foundation
Cultural Survival
Dames Making Games
Aliko Dangote Foundation
Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation (DRK)
Ecumenical Women’s Initiative
EdelGive Foundation
The Edge Fund
EEA / Norway Grants
Elsevier Foundation
EMpower (Emerging Markets Foundation)
End FGM Grassroots Fund
Equality Fund
EQUALS Digital Skills Foundation
European Journalism Centre (EJC)
Women’s Action for New Directions (WAND)
Faraway Foundation
Feminist Review Trust
The Freedom Fund

Author: Gender Equality Funding News

Philanthropy Women aggregates the most important gender equality funding news. View all posts by Gender Equality Funding News

Sex and gender in science

How to navigate a challenging area of research to the benefit of all

28 May 2024

Stylistic illustration showing the male and female chromosomes.

Credit: Sophi Gullbrants

Fraught societal debates, particularly surrounding gender identity, are raising questions about how to best take sex and gender into account in research, both in studies of human health and in other contexts. At the same time, scientists are increasingly recognizing that they must move past assumptions that findings from mainly male individuals will apply to everyone.

The articles in this special collection, with contributors who work in fields such as neuroscience, psychology, immunology, cancer and global health, explore the value of considering sex and gender in research, as well as the perils and pitfalls. They explain why progress in this long-neglected area of research is crucial — and consider how differences between individuals can be explored responsibly, inclusively and for the benefit of as many people as possible.

Editorial: Why it’s essential to study sex and gender, even as tensions rise

Podcast: Sex and gender discussions don’t need to be toxic

Latest articles

Heed lessons from past studies involving transgender people: first, do no harm

Decades of neuroscientific work have focused on exploring a biological basis for transgender identity — but researchers must take societal factors into account.

Neglecting sex and gender in research is a public-health risk

The data are clear: taking sex and gender into account in research and using that knowledge to change health care could benefit billions of people.

We need more-nuanced approaches to exploring sex and gender in research

Some scientists are reluctant to investigate questions about sex and gender, particularly given today’s sociopolitical tensions around gender identity. But they should lean in and embrace the complexity.

Male–female comparisons are powerful in biomedical research

Binary sex studies have been denounced as too simplistic — but abandoning them altogether would impede progress in a long-neglected area of biomedicine.

Further articles in this series will be published in the coming weeks.

Why it’s essential to study sex and gender, even as tensions rise

Some scholars are avoiding researching sex and gender out of fear that their studies will be misused in the culture war. Nature ’s new series is intended to lessen that fear and encourage scientists to dive in.

Sex and gender discussions don’t need to be toxic

The science of sex and gender is too often misinterpreted and weaponized. Now, three experts cut through the misinformation in search of a positive future for this long-neglected area of research.

Nature journals raise the bar on sex and gender reporting in research

Authors will be prompted to provide details on how sex and gender were considered in study design.

Accounting for sex and gender makes for better science

The European Commission is set to insist on steps that will make research design more inclusive.

Women’s health research lacks funding – these charts show how

Conditions that affect women more than men garner less funding. But boosting investment could reap big rewards

PERSPECTIVE

Sex and gender analysis improves science and engineering

How sex and gender analysis can foster scientific discovery, improve experimental efficiency and enable social equality.

The fraught quest to account for sex in biology research

Funders and publishers are increasingly asking researchers to account for the role of sex in experiments — a requirement that’s contentious and hard to get right.

Let’s talk about (biological) sex

You spent years investigating your beloved protein. You generated mouse models, found a phenotype and fixed it with a drug. You even used human cells to reveal a conserved mechanism. But a prestigious journal has rejected your manuscript because you did not include females. Here is why you should not be mad at them.

Sex differences in cancer

A special collection in Nature Reviews Cancer reveals mechanistic insights into the genetic, epigenetic, hormonal, immune and metabolic determinants of sex disparities in cancer susceptibility as well as treatment response, and showcases the need for achieving sex-directed cancer care.

Online images amplify gender bias

Gender bias is more prevalent in images than text, the under-representation of women online is substantially worse in images and googling for images amplifies gender bias in a person’s beliefs.

The largest study involving transgender people is providing long-sought insights about their health

The research examines once taboo questions about the impacts of gender transition.

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Click to read our five-year report: 5 Years of Collaboration for Just and Inclusive Systems!

The Gender Fund has been in development since early 2020. Its design builds on lived experiences of program partners and activists; consultations with researchers, practitioners and funders working on gender equality; and engagement with available evidence.

Sourcing for regional and country practice-focused research grants in Africa, Asia, and Latin America in 2022-23

Through the Gender Fund, we aim to make a significant contribution to the body of evidence on how to advance women's leadership and gender equality at scale by strengthening practitioner-oriented research and learning. In 2022-23 we have an opportunity to make a limited number of practice-focused research grants to learning organizations that actively bridge knowledge and practice, have the capacity to synthesize lessons across contexts, and are positioned to influentially disseminate those lessons. While Co-Impact will not be accepting unsolicited research grants, you can find out more details about our sourcing process.

Evidence Reviews

We also commissioned additional evidence reviews on topics relevant to advancing gender-equitable systemic change in health, education, and economic outcomes, particularly for women and girls.

These reviews sought to answer the following questions:

What is the evidence about what works to achieve gender equitable outcomes at scale and in the Global South, in the foundational systems of health, education and economic opportunity?
What is the evidence about what works to advance women’s leadership overall, and specifically in the professional sectors of laws and economics, in the Global South?

Below we share the papers that have been completed to date. Other papers in development will be added as they are completed. These papers represent independent interpretations of the authors and are meant to spur thinking and action.

Read the blog on what we are learning about how to achieve gender equality, at scale.

What Works for Low-Income Working Women

Girls’ Education at Scale

Women’s Professional Leadership in Law and Economics

What Works For Gender and Health in the Global South

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Study Examines Gender Disparity in Science Research Funding

Gains in Resources Flow to More Senior than Junior Women Biomedical Scientists; ‘Gender Tenure Gap’ Factors Significantly, Smith Researchers Show

Women increasingly populate the ranks of doctoral degree holders in U.S. life-science fields — from 32-38 percent in the mid-1980s to about 55 percent in 2020. But the trend is partly problematic.

Among biomedical scientists, senior women have benefited disproportionately to their junior counterparts in “both [research] funding amount and likelihood,” writes Associate Professor of Management and Organization Waverly Ding at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, with her co-authors, in research published at Nature Biotechnology . An underlying factor, she adds, is a structural set of tenure-inhibiting factors.

Ding collaborated with Smith doctoral candidate Beril Yalcinkaya , Chris Liu (University of Oregon’s Lundquist College of Business) and Andy S. Back (University of Hong Kong Business School).

They examined National Institutes of Health (NIH) distribution of 2.3 million grants to biomedical researchers between 1985 and 2017. They also referred to National Science Foundation data on academic scientist tenure trends.

In addition to the research funding gap, their findings illustrate a persisting gender disparity: “Women haven’t entered the tenured ranks in biomedical sciences at a rate commensurate to that of their entrance into the field.” For the past three decades, that probability has been about 20 percent for women and nearly 40 percent for men — leading to $8.73 billion in NIH research awards to men and $4.16 million to women.

Systemic Trend

While modern academia has embraced a diverse scientific workforce, Ding and her colleagues say the concept of indefinite tenure has evolved to placing job and resource stability as necessary preconditions.

Subsequently, as they explain, “with fewer resources accruing to junior-career-stage scientists, shortened career profiles and muted chances of achieving tenure, the scientific benefits that accrue from gender diversity will not be fully realized until junior members of the disadvantaged group (namely women) achieve more improvement in funding resources to narrow the gap to their more advantaged peers.”

Essentially, younger scientists face a twofold disadvantage: from increasing cohort competition among (young) peers as well as decreased attention relative to (older) high-status incumbent scientists.

And even though improvement in funding outcomes for senior women scientists helps close their gaps to senior men scientists, such “funding concentration is problematic if it systematically hinders the chances of funding for a specific subset of scientists, such as junior scientists in disadvantaged groups,” the authors say.

So, to fully realize the benefits of diversity in the scientific research field, steps can include designating research funding and providing grant-writing assistance to young women scientists, Ding says.

She and her co-authors cite an example: A recent Howard Hughes Medical Institute announcement to commit $1.5 billion to increase diversity, equity and inclusion among early-career scholars. “Without initiatives such as this one, there is little doubt that a continued lack of improvement in funding resources for junior members of disadvantaged groups will lead to the degradation of the vitality of the scientific workforce.”

Read “ The impact of gender diversity on junior versus senior biomedical scientists’ NIH research awards ” at Nature Biotechnology.

Waverly Ding
Beril Yalcinkaya
Maryland Smith Research
Management and Organization

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The Sexual & Gender Minority Research Office (SGMRO) coordinates sexual and gender minority (SGM)–related research and activities by working directly with the NIH Institutes, Centers, and Offices. The Office was officially established in September 2015 within the NIH Division of Program Coordination, Planning, and Strategic Initiatives (DPCPSI).

Sexual and gender minority (SGM) populations include, but are not limited to, individuals who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, asexual, transgender, Two-Spirit, queer, and/or intersex. Individuals with same-sex or -gender attractions or behaviors and those with a difference in sex development are also included. These populations also encompass those who do not self-identify with one of these terms but whose sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or reproductive development is characterized by non-binary constructs of sexual orientation, gender, and/or sex.

Allies are critical to the mission of the SGMRO. To describe allyship at NIH, the Director authored a blog post in collaboration with the NIH Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI). The post can be found along with others on the EDI 365 website.

Coordinate SGM health research activities across NIH
Represent NIH at conferences and events on trans-NIH activities focused on SGM research
Coordinate and convene conferences and workshops to inform priority setting and research activities
Collaborate with NIH Institutes and Centers on the development of SGM health research reports
Manage information dissemination related to SGM research
Work with NIH Institutes and Centers to leverage resources and develop initiatives to support SGM health research

Strategic Goals

Advance rigorous research on the health of SGM populations in both the extramural and intramural research communities
Expand SGM health research by fostering partnerships and collaborations with a strategic array of internal and external stakeholders
Foster a highly skilled and diverse workforce in SGM health research
Encourage data collection related to SGM populations in research and the health research workforce

For a complete review of our goals and objectives see the full NIH SGM Research Strategic Plan or the accompanying Strategic Plan Synopsis Handout .

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Subscribe to the SGM Listserv for updates on SGM-related research and other activities.

To contact the Sexual and Gender Minority Research Office, email us at [email protected] .

Director's Voice Blog

The Culturally Competent Gender-related Communications (C3) training resource contains an overview of gender-related language, including descriptions of related constructs (such as sex, gender, and gender identity), relevant linguistic issues, and practical examples and recommended practices for engaging in gender-sensitive and -competent communication in interactions with and discussions about professional colleagues, research investigators, administrative staff, coworkers, and people in general.

Center for Equity, Gender & Leadership

EGAL Center for Equity, Gender, and Leadership

2023-2024 Grantees

We are pleased to support the research of UC Berkeley faculty and PhD students who are examining topics related to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Contact Zena Barakat for more information.

Faculty Grantees

Erica Bailey

Can’t or won’t how beliefs about trait immutability impact women’s entry into leadership positions.

Rachel Gershon

The promise of ranked choice voting: overcoming electability concerns to increase votes for underrepresented candidates, phd grantees.

Jordan Mickens

The psychology of welfare: how group identity and policy delivery mechanism influence support for redistributive social policy.

Mengyao Huang

Leveraging diffusion models and online reinforcement learning for personalized advertisement design.

Silvia Barbareschi

"call me when you get home": new technologies, and the safety gender gap, post-doc grantees.

Joan Jennifer Martinez

Gender stereotype training impacts on labor market outcomes: experimental evidence from a large-scale school program.

Antonia Paredas-Haz

Can dictatorships improve women’s representation evidence from chile’s democratic transition.

Merrick Osborne

Whose voice is it anyways voice solicitation decisions in the context of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.

Next: 2022-2023 Grantees

UB Directory

Faculty Research Grants

The Gender Institute offers grants to UB faculty to support research and/or curriculum development that exemplifies high quality, innovative scholarship related to women, gender, and sexuality. The Institute is particularly interested in supporting projects that are collaborative and/or interdisciplinary and those that will lead to applications for an external award. Grants range from $1,000 - $7,000 and can be used for data collection, archival research, fieldwork, research assistance, supplies, books, software, travel integral to the development of the project, and other forms of research support and curriculum development expenses that are allowable under UB guidelines. Funds can also be used for course releases with the support of the applicant’s department chair. Applicants must be full-time tenure-track faculty, teaching faculty, or research scientists at the University at Buffalo. Past recipients may reapply three years after a successful Gender Institute application.

Applications for 2024-2025 are due on October 28, 2024. There will be no spring cycle.

Applications should be sent to [email protected] and must include:

1. Application cover sheet, available here .

2. Cover letter with project title, one-paragraph (200-word maximum) abstract, and the name(s), position(s), and department(s) of the applicant(s).

3. Three- to five-page, double-spaced research proposal, including: projected outcomes, timeline for project completion, and specific budget with details of planned expenditures. Proposal should be written to be understood by someone who is not in the field.

4. One page outlining how the application aligns with the mission of the Gender Institute and the extent of the applicant’s prior involvement with the Gender Institute.

5. Current CV (short version of no more than three pages).

6. List of previous and upcoming research support (grants, fellowships, leaves) and outcomes.

7. List of external funding sources (secured or targeted), if applicable.

8. If you intend to use the funds for a course release please provide a letter of support from your departmental chair.

Research grant applications will be evaluated by the Gender Institute’s Fellowship Awards Committee, which represents a cross-section of the university, and will be awarded based on the following criteria:

The quality and potential of the proposed research project and its relevance to women, gender and sexuality.
Planned application for external funding or award.
Collaborative and interdisciplinary nature of the project.
The completion record of previous research projects, if applicable.
The proposal’s ability to communicate the importance of the project beyond the applicant’s home discipline.
The applicant’s demonstrated commitment to participation in Institute programs.

Research Report : Within one year of receiving a research grant, recipients must submit a one-page summary of their research or research update, along with a description of how the award helped the recipient(s) pursue their research goals. Recipients will also present their research as part of a Feminist Research Alliance presentation or other GI event.

Spring 2024 Awardees

Annahita ball, good mothering ideology and the educational engagement of white middle class mothers: a qualitative meta-synthesis.

A woman with dark brown hair, wearing a blue shirt, smiling at the camera.

In this project, Annahita Ball will use qualitative meta-synthesis methodology to review andsynthesize existing research on white middle class mothers’ engagement in U.S. schools. Most research on parent engagement in schools focuses on understanding and improving schools’ efforts to engage marginalized parents. A growing line of inquiry investigates the engagement practices of white middle class parents, yet no theoretical frameworks exist to guide research and practice with this population. Current studies also do not focus on mothers, even though parent behavior is gendered and white women have been historically responsible for maintaining whiteness in their daily lives. Using good mothering ideology as a theoretical lens, this study will synthesize qualitative research on white middle class mothers’ engagement in education to uncover a new theory of educational engagement specific to white middle class mothers. Findings will guide the development of an intergroup dialogue (IGD) intervention to bridge differences across parents from differing social locations.

Dr. Annahita Ball , an Associate Professor in the University at Buffalo School of Social Work, investigates the “school-adjacent” mechanisms that advance educational justice and health equity, such as social-emotional learning, family engagement, and school mental health service delivery. She conducts transdisciplinary community-engaged research in collaboration with education and mental health institutions, community mental health providers, and youth and families. In 2022, Dr. Ball launched the Western New York School Mental Health Taskforce to address the national youth mental health crisis and work closely with the Erie County’s Supporting Mental Health by Advocating by Resources Together (SMART) Collaborative . Her most recent research explores and develops strategies to bridge social division in American school communities.

Jenifer Barclay

Enabling education: black women and the education of deaf and blind children in the post-emancipation south.

A woman with dark blonde hair, wearing a red shirt, smiling at the camera.

The archival research Jen will conduct this summer in Kentucky, Alabama, and North Carolina with the support of a Gender Institute Faculty Fellowship will contribute to her second book project and a scholarly journal article, “Her Yet Unwritten History: Black Women and the Education of Deaf and Blind Students in the Jim Crow South.” This article explores the long-overlooked role of Black women, both hearing and Deaf, who served as educators, administrators, and advocates for Black disabled children in the segregated South. Women such as Susan Lowe in Nashville, Tennessee – who opened a school for blind children in her own home when they were excluded from schools for Black (nondisabled) children and (white) blind children – drew on their own lived experiences of intersectionality to work against the overlapping forces of racism and ableism in their students’ lives.

Jenifer L. Barclay is an associate professor of history and associate director of the Center for Disability Studies. She is also a 2023-24 UB Humanities Institute fellow and a 2024-25 fellow at Cornell University’s Society for the Humanities. She is the author of The Mark of Slavery: Disability, Race, and Gender in Antebellum America (University of Illinois Press, 2021) and numerous journal articles and book chapters in publications such as Slavery & Abolition , Women, Gender, and Families of Color , and the Oxford Handbook of Disability History . She is currently working on her second monograph, Between Two Worlds: A Black Disability History of Southern Education from Emancipation to Integration and completing a co-edited collection with Stefanie Hunt-Kennedy, Cripping the Archive: Disability, History , and Power (forthcoming, University of Illinois Press).

Noelle St. Vil

An investigation of black americans’ experiences and perceptions of high-risk domestic violence.

A woman with dark brown hair, wearing a blazer, smiling at the camera.

Interventions to address intimate partner violence homicide (IPVH) largely rest with criminal justice and social service professionals. Yet, research demonstrates the need for community level interventions, specifically among Black Americans. However, there is a gap in what we know about Black Americans’ experiences, attitudes, and beliefs of high-risk intimate partner violence, and how to build community level responses to prevent IPVH. This study seeks to fill this gap. A total of 800+ participants will be recruited via Qualtrics survey panels. Inclusion criteria are Black Americans, ages 18+. Participants will complete a survey on their experiences, attitudes, and perceptions of high-risk intimate partner violence. Participants will be asked open-ended questions about community interventions to address IPVH. Univariate, bivariate and regressions will be used to analyze the data. Data will be used as pilot for an NIJ or OVW grant. Final products include a publishable manuscript and a conference presentation. By understanding high-risk IPVH from Black Americans perspectives,’ the identification and creation of community-based risk reduction strategies efforts is possible.

Noelle M. St. Vil is an Associate Professor in the UB School of Social Work. St. Vil is a graduate of Howard University, where she studied under Tricia Bent-Goodley, a leading expert in the field of intimate partner violence in the Black community. She completed her postdoctoral studies at Johns Hopkins University, under the guidance of world-renowned domestic violence expert, Dr. Jacqueline Campbell, creator of the Danger Assessment. Dr. St. Vil’s research focuses on supporting positive Black intimate relationships, with the aim of strengthening Black families and communities. Her research challenges scholarship that ignores systemic oppression, pathologizes, victim-blames, and stereotypes Black intimate relationships. Dr. St. Vil’s work highlights the disproportionate risks and dangers faced in Black intimate relationships but looks at these risks and dangers through a lens that is critical of historical and structural racism and affirming of Black resilience. Her scholarship concentrates on two dimensions of Black intimate relationships: 1) Violence Against Women; and 2) sexual behavior, health, and well-being. She has published 25 articles and seven book chapters.

Barbara Wejnert

Understanding cultures of democracy through disempowered communities' adaptation to climate change resilience measures: focus on single-mother households.

A woman with dark brown hair, wearing a pink blazer, smiling at the camera.

The Proposed project will explore democratic conditions that facilitate - or hinder - vulnerable, disenfranchised citizens’ ability to participate in climate resilience measures. Specifically, the work will focus on women, who typically have lower socioeconomic status, social position, and earning power relative to men, and particularly single-mother households, who are considered to be the leading segment of the feminization of US poverty. The effect of cultures of American democracy to support a sustainable future will be measured through their impact on affordability, availability, familiarity, and equal opportunity of access and adaption to climate change resilience measures for single-mother households.

Dr. Barbara Wejnert is Professor in the Department of Environment and Sustainability and is also a faculty member at the Jaeckel Center for Law, Democracy, and Governing at the University at Buffalo. She is an award-winning author of research papers specializing in democracy, politics and energy security, political sociology, environmental sustainability, and gender. Her interdisciplinary, transnational research focuses on the worldwide diffusion of democracy, the rise of autocracy, and the effects of these changes on energy democracy, environmental sustainability, and gender equity. She is an author and editor of 14 books, including Diffusion of Democracy ( 2014), published by Cambridge University Press, a database Nations, Development and Democracy (2005) published by the Interuniversity Consortium for Social and Political Research , and over 80 peer-reviewed articles in professional journals related to democratizing processes and their consequences on environmental politics and sustainability, gender equality, and development. In 2016, her work on gender and democracy received the Inaugural Arlene Kaplan Daniels Paper Award . Her work on the diffusion of democracy was honored by its presentation at the US Congressional Reception as a poster highlighting sociological research with national policy significance.

Fall 2023 Awardees

Nadine shaanta murshid, transnational middle-class bangladeshis resisting oppression.

In this project Murshid will elucidate the specific ways in which both oppression and resistance to oppression takes place. The project will reveal the mechanism through which oppression is produced in the context of migration, socio-economics, capital and labor flows, and representation of Bangladeshis in the Global North. On the solutions side, the project will examine the role of arts in producing cross-class solidarity and resistance to violence through inculcation of safe spaces and community building.

Nadine Shaanta Murshid is Associate Professor at the School of Social Work. Her research focuses on economic institutions, migration, structural violence, and partner violence in the lives of individuals in and from the global South.

Andrea Pitts

Latina/x abolitionist feminisms: incarceration, agency, and coalitional politics.

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This Faculty Research Grant will support the mentorship and training of two graduate students to aid in the research for a second book project titled Latina/x Abolitionist Feminisms: Incarceration, Agency, and Coalitional Politics, a project that examines how U.S.-based Latina/x feminist scholars and activists have worked across coalitional spaces to critically respond to policing and prisons since, at least, the 1960s. This research training includes, specifically, an archival visit to the University of California’s Ethnic Studies Collection to help catalog and examine the archival materials of a prominent Chicana activist, educator, and researcher, Dr. Velia Garcia (d. 2012). During her lifetime, Dr. Garcia served as a faculty member in the Chicano Studies and Raza Studies programs at UC Berkeley and San Francisco State University, respectively, and worked on the original steering committee of the National Association of Chicana and Chicano Studies. Alongside this academic work, she was also a founding member of the Vacaville Prison Project, an organization dedicated to prison education and advocacy work, including classes with non-incarcerated students in the Bay Area and incarcerated students at the California Medical Facility at Vacaville, California, a state prison located an hour north of the Bay Area. To this day, her contributions to anti-carceral feminism remain unexamined and her archival materials remain uncatalogued. As such, this support from the Gender Institute will enable two graduate assistants to help organize and study Dr. Garcia’s materials.

Andrea J. Pitts is an interdisciplinary researcher and educator whose publications and pedagogy focus on carceral medicine and radical health activism, Latin American and U.S. Latina/x feminisms, prison and police abolition, queer migration studies, critical transgender politics, and disability justice. They are the author of Nos/Otras: Gloria E. Anzaldúa, Multiplicitous Agency, and Resistance (2021), and co-editor of Beyond Bergson: Examining Race and Colonialism through the Writings of Henri Bergson (2019), Theories of the Flesh: Latinx and Latin American Feminisms, Transformation, and Resistance (2020), and Trans Philosophy (forthcoming 2024). Their current book project Latina/x Abolitionist Feminisms: Incarceration, Agency, and Coalitional Politics examines the philosophical contributions made by U.S Latina/x activists and scholars critiquing state violence, prisons, and policing from the 1960s to the early 2000s.

Michelle Sperlich

Survivor moms’ companion, a psychoeducational intervention for pregnant and parenting survivors of abuse and trauma: development of spanish language translations.

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Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) related to maltreatment is a strong predictor of intergenerational cycles of abuse and vulnerability. These cycles intersect during the childbearing years when unresolved trauma often adversely affects a woman’s mental health. Women of color are especially at risk for developing PTSD as well experiencing disparities for maternal and infant morbidity and mortality. Pregnancy is an opportune time to intervene to disrupt these cycles, however, screening and treating PTSD in the perinatal period is rarely undertaken. Therefore, readily available interventions for low-resourced and high-risk settings are warranted. Buffalo Prenatal Perinatal Network (BPPN) provides home visiting and other supportive services to pregnant women and their families who bear considerable burden of poverty, adversity, and disparities. Our previous collaborative research has established initial acceptability and feasibility for a novel front-line PTSD-specific perinatal intervention, the Survivor Moms’ Companion (SMC). In the proposed study, we will advance this reach of this intervention through creation and evaluation of Spanish-language translations of the client materials integral to the delivery of the SMC. This effort to increase equity of access to the BPPN Spanish-speaking clients will help to provide for the sustainability of the SMC at BPPN and further its trajectory of research capacity.

Mickey Sperlich , an assistant professor in the School of Social Work, is an experienced midwife and researcher who studies the effects of trauma and mental health challenges on women's childbearing and postpartum experiences and outcomes. She originally became interested in research in order to better understand the needs of her midwifery clients who were trauma survivors. Her first research project culminated in the book "Survivor Moms: Women's Stories of Birthing, Mothering and Healing after Sexual Abuse," which was named the 2008 Book of the Year by the America College of Nurse Midwives.

Sperlich has taken part in several trauma-focused perinatal studies and is co-author of a psychosocial intervention for pregnant survivors of abuse, the " Survivor Moms' Companion ." She completed her PhD with a dual-title in Social Work and Infant Mental Health at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, in 2014. Sperlich is committed to developing and evaluating trans-disciplinary interventions to understand and address the sequelae of sexual violence and other trauma, particularly in relation to women's reproductive health and childbearing. Sperlich's research also examines the importance of a trauma-informed approach for positioning such interventions and fostering their success. Owing in part to its contribution to maternal mortality, a recent research focus includes looking at gun violence and how to better involve social workers in intervening to prevent such violence.

Despina Stratigakos

Ella briggs: the life and work of an unconventional architect and the global quest to find her.

For a long time, historians have searched for Ella Briggs. The talented artist, designer, and architect appeared at the turning points and places of history: she painted with the Secessionists in Vienna, created luminous rooms in Gilded Age New York, and erected workers’ housing in Red Vienna before opening her own firm in Berlin at the height of the roaring twenties. By the time Hitler came to power and she fled to London, she had attained an international profile. Yet after her death, historians lost sight of her.

Briggs’s skill in navigating borders and different cultural contexts, which placed her at the hotspots of public discourse about modernism for much of the twentieth century, worked against her inclusion in the history books. Individual scholars have struggled to reconstruct the many facets of her career across place and time, and she remains a shadowy figure in modernist history, even as her name lingers in the margins.

In an ambitious effort to finally reveal Briggs’s story, Despina Stratigakos and Elana Shapira have assembled a team of American, Austrian, British and German historians to collaboratively produce a biography. Scouring archives and attics, they have made breakthrough discoveries about Briggs, her networks and projects, and the transmission of ideas about modern design. Written in an accessible style, the book offers the fascinating story of an inspiring designer determined to leave her mark in these world capitals as well as a new model for writing the elusive histories of women architects.

Despina Stratigakos is a writer, historian, and professor of architecture at the State University of New York at Buffalo.

Her research explores how power and ideology function in architecture, whether in the creation of domestic spaces or of world empires. She is the author of four books. Stratigakos has also published widely on issues of diversity in architecture and promotes awareness of the topic with broad audiences. In 2011, she collaborated with Mattel on the design and launch of Architect Barbie in Mattel’s “I Can Be” Barbie career series. She has been involved in Wikipedia edit-a-thons to increase the women in architecture content on the influential website. She has published in The Atlantic , The Los Angeles Times , and Al Jazeera , among other media outlets. She is a regular contributor to Architect Magazine and Places Journal , where she has published on themes such as the “bro” culture of Albert Speer’s office and gendered stereotypes of architects in Hollywood films.

Gwynn Thomas

Feminist activism, right-wing populism and the struggle for democracy in latin america.

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In Feminist Activism, Right-Wing Populism and the Struggle for Democracy in Latin America , Thomas builds off of extensive field research in Chile to examine the relationships between the growth of vibrant feminist movements and the rise of a new form of right-wing politics. She argues that feminist activism and feminist-inspired social movements have been at the forefront of current attempts to deepen democratic practices and confront social injustice. However, the growth of feminist movements has also been accompanied by the rise of a new form of right-wing populism that particularly target feminist movements and their political gains in on-going right-wing attempts to usher in illiberal and authoritarian politics. While in the past, the political right in Chile—and elsewhere in Latin America—was rooted in a traditional form of heteropatriarchy that valorized the family and rooted men’s political power in their roles as fathers and heads of households, thus positioning women first and foremost as mothers, wives, and daughters, more recent right-wing populist movements have embraced and centered a virulent form of hyper-masculinity based on misogynistic and homophobic. This targeting of feminist gains by rising right-wing populists shows both how powerful feminist ideas have become and the importance of backlash politics in understanding the rise of right-wing populism.

Gwynn Thomas (Chile) is an associate professor and Chair of the Department of Global Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York. Her first book, Contesting Legitimacy in Chile: Familial Ideals, Citizenship, and Political Struggle, 1970–1990 (2011), examines the mobilization of familial beliefs in Chilean political conflicts. Her published work on gender politics, feminist movements, women’s political leadership and participation, and feminist institutionalism appears in The Journal of Women, Politics and Policy; The International Feminist Journal of Politics; Gender & Politics; The Journal of Latin American Studies ; Comparative Politics; Comparative Political Studies; Journal of Politics in Latin Americas; and The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, as well as a number of important edited collections . She received the Elsa Chaney Award in 2007 from the Gender and Feminist Studies section of the Latin American Studies Association. She is currently working on the relationships between the growth of vibrant feminist movements and the rise of a new form of right-wing politics in Chile, and across Latin America.

Spring 2023 Awardees

Sarah robert, teaching, gender, and (covid) policies.

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“Teaching, gender, and (Covid) policies” is concerned with documenting teachers’ work experiences from March 2020 (the onset of Covid-19) to present in Argentina, Chile, the UK, and USA. This study also is concerned with theorizing changes to the relationship of gender and policy from the perspective of teachers and their work. The authors seek to build on and contribute to a global literature concerned with women’s paid and unpaid labor as well as studies of how gender shapes and is shaped by policy discourses, texts, and practices.

Dr. Sarah A. Robert is an international education policy expert. She critiques how policy and politics shape and are shaped by the intersectional qualities of gender in global, South American, and US urban contexts. Her ethnographies and qualitative, social science-informed studies are concentrated on three areas: teachers’ work, school food, and curriculum/textbooks. As a first-gen, feminist, interdisciplinary public intellectual, she strives to demystify policy, to cultivate and support policy protagonists through teaching and long-term community collaborations, and to transform educational decision making into an inclusive process focused on realizing human rights and just transitions in educational institutions and for societies. Dr. Robert is an Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Education, Learning and Instruction Department and an Affiliated Faculty member in Global Gender and Sexuality Studies.

Jasmina Tumbas

Queer and feminist yugoslav diaspora: art of resistance beyond nationhood.

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This funding will support the research, writing, and organization of two projects, both emerging out of a major research focus on gender and sexuality in the former Yugoslav region: 1) A single-authored, peer-reviewed book: Queer and Feminist Yugoslav Diaspora: Art of Resistance Beyond Nationhood, which is the first comprehensive study of the last generation of feminist, queer, and Romani artists, filmmakers, and activists coming out of the 1990s wars in former Yugoslavia and now dispersed in diasporas around the world. This requires archival research and international travel (completion goal: end of2024). 2) An exhibition based on her first book (I am Jugoslovenka, 2022) and a new book project (Queer and Feminist Yugoslav Diaspora).

Dr. Jasmina Tumbas is an Associate Professor in the Dept. of Global Gender and Sexuality Studies, where she serves as the Director of Graduate Studies. As an art historian and gender studies scholar, she teaches courses on global feminist and queer histories and theories of art and politics, looking closely at the tensions between gender, citizenship, sexuality, and the state, and how diverse forms of representations ranging from (but not limited to) art, film, photography, and music videos are mobilized politically. Her writing and research focus on gender and sexuality in Eastern Europe after WWII, with an emphasis on former Yugoslavia, as well as popular representations of ethnic Roma in the Balkan region centered on questions of gender, citizenship, immigration, and race.

Kari Winter

Finding love amid the rubble of extractive capitalism: a case study of connecticut, 1765-1817.

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This project focuses on building an illuminating history of gender, race, disinheritance, and rebellious love based on the fragmentary appearances of women's experiences and women's voices in the family papers of two prominent lawyers, Benjamin Stiles, Sr. and Benjamin Stiles, Jr., whose activities included not only practicing the legal profession and helping to write laws but also the enslavement of Africans, appropriation of Indian lands, investments in mines, and extracting sexual, reproductive and domestic labor from a range of women.

Dr. Kari Winter is a Professor of American Studies in the Department of Global Gender and Sexuality Studies. She served as the Director of the UB Gender Institute (2011-17) and Executive Director of the UB Humanities Institute (interim, 2017-18). She completed a PhD in English at the University of Minnesota (1990) and a BA in English and History at Indiana University (1981). Her books include The American Dreams of John B. Prentis, Slave Trader (Race in the Atlantic World series, U of Georgia P, 2011), The Blind African Slave: or, Memoirs of Boyrereau Brinch, Nick-named Jeffrey Brace (scholarly edition of long-lost 1810 slave narrative; Wisconsin Studies in Autobiography series, 2005), and Subjects of Slavery, Agents of Change: Women and Power in Gothic Novels and Slave Narratives, 1790-1865 (U of Georgia P, 1992, 1995, 2010).

Fall 2022 Awardees

Linda kahn & sarah abdelsayed, the mother’s justice project: exploring the experiences of pregnant and parenting women with substance use and justice involvement.

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Linda Kahn (left) & Sarah Abdelsayed (right)

This qualitative study focuses on pregnant and parenting women’s experiences in the justice system in relation to motherhood and substance use recovery. These women confront a triple stigma of justice-involvement, substance use, and negative societal judgment about their roles as mothers. They encounter systemic barriers to treatment and support. Investigators are conducting interviews with justice-involved women to learn how they navigate motherhood, substance use treatment, and justice system requirements. The research questions explore: (1) How do participants conceptualize their roles as mothers; (2) Which contextual and intersectional factors affect access to substance use treatment, health care, social services, and other resources; and (3) How has the justice system helped or hindered their ability to recover from addiction and achieve their personal goals, especially related to motherhood?

Linda S. Kahn, PhD , is a Research Professor and Associate Vice Chair for Research with the Primary Care Research Institute in the Department of Family Medicine. Sarah Abdelsayed, MD , is an Assistant Professor and the Associate Program Director of the Addiction Medicine Fellowship in the Department of Family Medicine.

Melinda Lemke

School district residency, retention, and community well-being: a policy analysis at the intersection of class, gender, and race.

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This funding will support an interdisciplinary social policy project focused on the following three areas: 1. public employee residency policies and relevant case law; 2. educator retention and attrition patterns in U.S. schools (pre- and post-Covid); and 3. factors contributing to staff and student overall health and well-being. Utilizing multiple qualitative methods, we will examine the history and contemporary existence of these policies and patterns, with specific attention paid to factors supporting and/or hindering educator and student social determinants of health. This research builds on previous critical, feminist, and critical race educational policy analyses by aiming to unpack hidden and visible power dynamics embodied within policy, discourse, and contextualized practice, which in turn shape the work experience of women educators and schooling experience of historically underserved and/or minoritized students.

Melinda Lemke (she/her/hers), PhD, is an Associate Professor of Educational Policy, Global Gender and Sexuality Studies Affiliated Faculty, and Honors College Faculty Fellow. Dr. Lemke is a former K-12 practitioner, qualitative methodologist, and her research areas include neoliberal educational reform, the politics of education, forced displacement, and how social policies and actors reinforce and/or ameliorate structural violence in the lives of young women and girls. Her work can be found in a range of practitioner, policy, and research outlets, including journals such as Children's Geographies , Gender and Education , and Journal of Education Policy .

Carine Mardorossian

The creolized ecologies of caribbean fiction.

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Over the last few decades, Caribbean studies has been instrumental in reconfiguring postcolonial studies by challenging the field’s focus on nationalist and identity-based rubrics. It has promoted a groundbreaking New World perspective called “creolization” that favors relationality and hybridity over the exclusionary logic of identity-based thought by highlighting the transcultural exchanges that occur both inside and across national, racial, linguistic, and class boundaries in a Creole society. Today, creolization’s cultural crossfertilization has been widely endorsed both as more reflective of our global and intersectional realities and as an emancipatory project. Indeed, its radical challenge to viewing racial, national, and cultural differences as discrete and categorical sites of alterity thwarts the process of establishing hierarchies based on such differences. Nevertheless, while postcolonial studies now almost uniformly embraces creolization’s coming together of cultures, languages, and races, the counterpart of cultural cross-fertilization in environmental studies is far from viewed as liberatory. When it is life forms rather than cultural forms that are at stake, the interaction between organisms from widely disparate places of origin often entails environmentally perverse rather than progressive effects that need to be managed. The enormous threat to Caribbean islands and their unique biodiversity from introduced invasive species is a case in point.

Creolized Ecologies examines the implications for Caribbean environmental and geographical realities of Caribbean literary representations of social, cultural, and national identities. In so doing, it brings into relief the incongruencies that often characterize depictions of environmental spaces in Caribbean fiction.

Carine M. Mardorossian, PhD, is a Professor of Global Gender Studies and English, and Affiliated Faculty of Romance Languages and Literatures and Environmental and Sustainability Studies.

Katja Praznik

Advancing a feminist agenda through art workers’ organizing: toward an international comparative analysis.

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Photo credit: Jaka Babnik

Art Work: Invisible Labour and the Legacy of Yugoslav Socialism (Praznik, 2021) argues that the invisibility of labor in the arts is gendered. But so is the labor movement. The current project is an extension of the book insofar as it seeks not just to expose the invisibility of art work as labor but to now work to render art visible as a form of labor: to this end, it is necessary to turn to labor organizing and unionization. With a group of majority women art workers in Ljubljana, we founded an art workers union. This new project will use this effort as a template to investigate whether the unionization of art workers could be replicated in the United States, and if not, why not?

Struggles against labor exploitation and fair payment in the arts have seen a new rise globally, especially in the wake of the pandemic. Women and labor struggles that concentrate women or feminized labor have been central to this resurgence, yet labor movements continue to be perceived as a masculine affair. This project will partially provide a redress to the lopsidedness of representations that fail to account for the presence and organizational skills of women in labor organizing.

Katja Praznik, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Arts Management Program and Department of Media Study.

Marla Segol

The magical womb of god: a history of pregnancy, power, and the feminine divine in jewish ritual texts.

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This book is a medical humanities project exploring the mythological and ritual functions of scientific narratives of reproduction, gestation, and birth (embryologies) in Jewish ritual texts from late antiquity to the present. It is also a project in reparative reading, for while there is much talk of the Divine Feminine, there is little to ground that narrative in historical sources. To this end, the author will translate and analyze Hebrew texts that ritualize embryologies in instructions for prayers and incantations, performed by expectant fathers and pregnant mothers to request the safe delivery for mother and child, and by the whole community as petitions for rain. The texts date from late antiquity to modernity, with the earliest sources written exclusively by men, while some early modern and modern works are authored by women. Male-authored texts include Jewish legal texts (Talmud, 4th-6th C Persia), medical compendia (4th-6th C Persia), piyyutim or liturgical poetry (3rd-9th C Persia and Byzantium), and mystical (kabbalistic) texts (13th-16th C, Iberia and Palestine). In this way we see the relation between scientific narrative, religious myth, and ritual power, for as these embryological text develop myths focusing on divine maternity, they afford greater ritual power to the women who use them.

Marla Segol, PhD, is an Associate Professor and the Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Global Gender and Sexuality Studies.

Kim VanDerLinden & Tricia Lyman

Living in two worlds: exploring their cultural resiliency of haudenosaunee adult women after adoption, as children, into white families.

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Kim VanDerLinden (Not pictured: Tricia Lyman)

This research seeks to accomplish three primary outcomes. First, it will provide a historical perspective on adoption, specifically within the Haudenosaunee Confederacy during the 20th century. Secondly, this research will result in the publication and sharing of the stories of Haudenosaunee women who were adopted as children into white families. In addition, this research seeks to advance our understanding of how Haudenosaunee women come to understand their cultural identity as adults and in relation to their adoption into white families. The women’s life stories will be aligned with HeavyRunner and Morris’s (1997) theory of cultural resiliency in order to provide insight as to the applicability of this theory to this group of women who were removed from their birth culture and forced to assimilate to the dominant white culture.

Kim VanDerLinden, PhD, is a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Interdisciplinary Social Sciences program at the University at Buffalo and an Adjunct Professor at the College of William and Mary. Tricia Lyman, EdD, is a Clinical Assistant Professor Clinical Assistant Professor in the Social Sciences Interdisciplinary program at the University at Buffalo.

Vulnerable Fatherhood: Masculinity, Disability, and Moral Becoming in China’s Special Education Schools

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This study examines the less-known realm of vulnerable fatherhood in the practical and emotional realities of raising and educating children with disabilities in urban China. It is set in a particular type of institutions called special education schools where students with complex needs are accommodated in socially, spatially, and educationally segregated spaces. In China’s cultural and familial ideals, women bear disproportionate shame associated with birthing “less-than-perfect” offspring; as well, the “diminished” personhood of children with disabilities also renders fatherhood fragile and insecure. This study explores the embodied practices of “caring masculinities” performed by fathers, in the context of a special education school where disability profoundly destabilizes men’s self-understanding in relation to their children, partners, and educators. How do fathers navigate the fraught terrains of masculinity and (dis)ability and engage in the worlds of care? How do they mesh lingering patriarchal ideals with new embodiment, emotionality, and moral becoming in their everyday encounters in and out of the special education school? This study, part of a larger research on disability segregation in contemporary China, explores vulnerable fatherhood as a site of gender and disability intersection, and as the unintended consequence of a patriarchal structure that supposedly privileges men.

Jinting Wu, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Educational Culture, Policy and Society in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy.

2021-2022 Awardees

The Gender Institute congratulates the recipients of the 2021-2022 Faculty Research Grant: Yige Dong, (Sociology) , Ndubueze Mbah (History), Deborah Reed-Danahay (Anthropology), Elizabeth Scarlett (Romance Languages and Literatures), Amy VanScoy (Information Science) and Co-investigators, Heidi Julien (Information Science), Deborah Hicks (School of Information SJSU), and Alexandra Zirkle (Jewish Thought).

2019-2020 Awardees

The Gender Institute congratulates the recipients of the 2019-2020 Faculty Research Grant: Katharina A. Azim (Psychology) , Laina Bay-Cheng (School of Social Work), Kathleen A. Parks (Psychology), Noelle St. Vil (School of Social Work) and Paola Ugolini (Romance Languages and Literatures).

Past Awardees

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Nastasia Paul-Gera and Shelby House Receive Simpson Center Funding for Research Cluster

GWSS graduate student Nastasia Paul-Gera and Shelby House from Anthropology have received funding from the Simpson Center for the Humanities' Spring funding round. Their new Graduate Research Cluster, More-than-Human Worlds , is one of nine research clusters to be funded for the 2024-2025 academic year.

For more details on the funded projects, please visit the Simpson Center's Spring Funding page .

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Jessica Grose

The gender pay gap is a culture problem.

By Jessica Grose

Opinion Writer

American women made significant progress toward closing the gender pay gap in the second half of the 20th century, but that gap has barely budged over the past two decades. In 2022, according to Pew Research , “American women typically earned 82 cents for every dollar earned by men. That was about the same as in 2002, when they earned 80 cents to the dollar.”

In a country where women are now a (slight) majority of the college-educated labor force and the annual earnings median for college degree holders is 55 percent more than that of those with high school diplomas, the stickiness of this gap is frustrating. While there are several factors at play, one of the key contributors to the gap is what’s known as the motherhood penalty and the corresponding fatherhood premium: Women’s pay decreases when they have children, while men’s pay increases.

This dynamic isn’t just an American phenomenon. “In general, women don’t recover. They don’t catch back up to men, even many years after first childbirth,” said Henrik Kleven, the lead author of a 2023 National Bureau of Economic Research working paper, “ The Child Penalty Atlas ,” in which he and his co-authors, Camille Landais and Gabriel Leite-Mariante, reviewed wage gap data from 134 countries. “Now, that basic pattern is true essentially everywhere, but the quantitative magnitudes of the effects vary greatly across countries,” he told me recently.

Somewhat surprisingly to me, his research, which builds on years of earlier scholarship, suggests that a country’s family policy has relatively little to do with how big the parenthood pay gap is. A society’s culture and norms seem to be much bigger factors in how big the motherhood penalty is: The more egalitarian the culture, the lower the gap.

Kleven told me that sometimes countries that seem superficially similar in terms of income levels, development, family policy and geography have very different pay gaps. (We see the same interplay in American states , with the child penalty 21 percent in Vermont and 61 percent in Utah.) Even countries right next to each other can have wildly different gaps. Spain’s child pay gap is much bigger than Portugal’s, and Germany’s is bigger than Denmark’s. Central European countries have “some of the highest child penalties we see anywhere in the world,” Kleven said. Scandinavian countries have some of the lowest.

Let’s look at Austria. It has generous family leave policies and child care subsidies , especially by American standards. But in a 2022 working paper, “Do Family Policies Reduce Gender Inequality? Evidence From 60 Years of Policy Experimentation,” Kleven and his co-authors’ analysis showed “that the enormous expansions of parental leave and child care subsidies have had virtually no impact on gender convergence.” Despite an influx of Austrian women into the work force in the past 50 or so years, the relatively large child penalty can be at least partly explained by gender attitudes and norms.

According to data from the 2012 wave of the International Social Survey Program that was analyzed in the paper, more than 60 percent of Austrians agreed that when a mother works for pay, her young children probably suffer. By comparison, those in the more egalitarian Scandinavian countries felt differently. Fewer than 20 percent of Danes agreed that children suffer when their mothers work outside the home. Though that data is more than a decade old, those kinds of attitudes die hard and are backed up by newer research .

Speaking of Danes: A new paper from economists at Lund University, the University of Amsterdam and Aarhus University found that for a subset of Danish women, the motherhood penalty disappeared in the long run and, in limited circumstances, turned into a premium. The paper followed the earnings trajectory of more than 18,000 child-free women who received in vitro fertilization treatment in Denmark, where, Time magazine reported in 2019, “the cost of three cycles of I.V.F. for a first child is covered by the tax-financed public health service” for women up to the age of 40. The study’s authors then compared the women who had successful first-round I.V.F. treatments and ended up with children and the women who didn’t.

The women who had successful I.V.F. treatments had a near-term child penalty, and their earnings dropped below those of the women with unsuccessful treatments. “By Year 10,” though, according to the study, “successfully treated women earn as much as unsuccessfully treated women. And by Year 15, successfully treated women earn slightly more. This earnings advantage persists throughout the remainder of the study period.” Men’s earnings weren’t affected, regardless of whether they became parents.

In my mind, one limitation in interpreting these findings is that I.V.F. pregnancies are planned, while over 40 percent of pregnancies in the United States, for example, are unplanned . One could imagine that the women pursuing I.V.F. at various income levels might be better set up to weather a career interruption than women who have surprise pregnancies. But it is still a thought-provoking finding that complicates previous child gap research.

In the United States, where gender norms are less progressive than in Scandinavia and the “costs for a single cycle of I.V.F. have recently been estimated to range from $15,000 to $20,000 and can exceed $30,000,” according to the Department of Health and Human Services, we find a very different experience with the motherhood pay gap than in Denmark. And it’s a much less happy picture.

A paper published last year in the scientific journal PNAS looked at 22 years of administrative data from the United States and found “surprisingly robust” motherhood penalties, even, unfortunately, in circumstances in which you might expect that the penalty would be slim, like in female-breadwinner families:

On average, women earn 57 percent more than men in these female-breadwinner families. Were couples simply seeking to maximize household income conditional on a certain amount of time investment in children, we would expect to see fatherhood penalties. Instead, we see one of the largest motherhood penalties in female-breadwinner families. Indeed, higher-earning women experience a 60 percent drop from prechildbirth earnings relative to their lower-earning male partner and the highest of our various sample stratifications. The pattern we find for the United States is the polar opposite of that for Sweden.

There was also no difference for mothers in companies that were female led or had a majority of female employees. “If anything,” according to the authors, “this motherhood penalty grows faster over time at firms headed by women. On the whole, our findings are discouraging even relative to the existing work on motherhood penalties.”

I asked one of the paper’s co-authors, Cecilia Machado , an economist at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, to summarize the state of the motherhood penalty in the United States. If we wanted to take steps to improve the pay gap as a society, what would we do? Via email, she said that there might be a limited scope of what public policy and workplace policy can do. But she added that federal and workplace policy that encouraged both men and women to take paid parental leave could help; creating the political conditions for involved fatherhood in a child’s first year can set egalitarian patterns that last a lifetime. Still, Machado said, “Both of these combined are important policies, but maybe them alone, by themselves, will not work if we don’t see culture and gender norms changing.”

My take is that we’re in a time when cultural norms around motherhood in the United States seem particularly contradictory and in flux. While a record high percentage of women with children under 5 work, a large subset of Americans still thinks society would be better off if they didn’t.

In an email, Jessica Calarco, a sociologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the author of “ Holding It Together: How Women Became America’s Safety Net, ” said:

I asked 2,000 parents from across the U.S., “Do you think children are better off if their mother is home and doesn’t hold a job, or are children just as well off if their mother works for pay?” Fifty-two percent of dads and 47 percent of moms said it’s better for kids if their moms aren’t working for pay. Those attitudes are somewhat more common among Republicans (60 percent of dads and 48 percent of moms), but they’re pretty common among Democrats, too (53 percent of dads and 41 percent of moms).

Until we reconcile our cultural ambivalence toward working mothers, I don’t think the gap is going to get any better. Maybe in another 20 years, we’ll get another two cents.

Jessica Grose is an Opinion writer for The Times, covering family, religion, education, culture and the way we live now.

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Government of Canada invests in research partnerships to push the boundaries of innovation

From: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada

News release

Research partnerships have the power to amplify the impact of new ideas through the creation and exchange of knowledge across disciplines, sectors and borders. Such partnerships generate valuable insights that can lead to intellectual, cultural, social and economic benefits for all Canadians.

Funding will help foster and create partnerships between world-class research institutions and organizations in the field of social sciences and humanities

May 29 , 2024 – Ottawa, Ontario – Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada

Today, the Honourable François-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, announced more than $51 million to support 90 research partnerships across Canada. This investment, through the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada’s Partnership Grants and Partnership Development Grants , provides researchers from different disciplines and postsecondary institutions the opportunity to work together on challenging topics and research questions in social sciences and humanities.

These partnerships involve close collaboration with the public, private or not-for-profit sectors, as well as international researchers. They also provide unique training experiences in a partnership context, with opportunities for students to acquire new research and professional and workforce-ready skills.

Funded projects will explore various topics, such as transparency in governance, adult education, histories of performance, attachment issues in children, homelessness and responsible procurement. By bringing in different expertise, perspectives and skill sets, these partnership projects help strengthen knowledge and maximize research outputs with local, regional, national and global impacts. Whether it’s supporting students or helping world-class researchers, science and research funding helps shape tomorrow’s leaders and gives them a fair chance to succeed in this important field.

“Partnerships allow for the exploration of groundbreaking ideas by bringing together Canada’s top researchers and organizations. The government is proud to invest in Canada's collaborative research spirit. Together, they foster existing partnerships or develop new ones that will fuel discoveries and innovations for a better tomorrow for all Canadians.” —The Honourable François-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry

“From examining the links between legislation, innovation and society, to developing partnerships for strengthening economic development in rural communities, these partnership grants in the social sciences and the humanities address important topics that will unlock new knowledge and advance society to provide better outcomes for Canadians and the global community.” —Ted Hewitt, President, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada

Quick facts

Budget 2024 proposed $1.8 billion to the federal research granting councils to increase core research grant funding and support Canadian researchers, including students and postdoctoral researchers.

Budget 2024 also provided $825 million to increase the value and number of research scholarships and fellowships.

SSHRC Research Partnerships funding for social sciences and humanities research is intended for formal partnerships between postsecondary institutions and/or organizations of various types.

More than $37 million in Partnership Grants was awarded to 15 projects over seven years, while 75 projects will receive a total of over $14 million in Partnership Development Grants over three years .

SSHRC Partnership Development Grants award between $75,000 and $200,000 in value for a duration of between one and three years. They support the development of partnerships or the design and testing of new partnership approaches to nurture existing and emerging opportunities for research collaboration, best practices and/or models that can be adapted by others or scaled up to a regional, national or international level.

SSHRC Stage 2 Partnership Grants award up to $2.5 million in value for a duration of between four and seven years. They support new and existing formal partnerships to advance research, research training and/or knowledge mobilization in the social sciences and humanities.

Since 2016, the Government of Canada has invested more than $16 billion in science and research across the country.

Associated links

SSHRC Research Partnerships
SSHRC Partnership Development Grants: Competition overview
SSHRC Partnership Development Grants: Latest award recipients
SSHRC Stage 2 Partnership Grants: Competition overview
SSHRC Stage 2 Partnership Grants: Latest award recipients

Audrey Milette Press Secretary Office of the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry [email protected]

Media Relations Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada [email protected]

Media Relations Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council 613-219-2489 [email protected]

Stay connected

Find more services and information at Canada.ca/ISED .

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AuthorAID gender in research grants
2023-2025 WIT Fellowship Grants and Inaugural LMIC Fellowship Grant for
131 Impressive Gender Research Topics For College Students
Outstanding Gender Research Topics For College Students
The Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU) Gender Grants 2020
125 Best Gender Research Topics For Your Paper

VIDEO

Women's Leadership: Efforts to Close the Gender Gap

COMMENTS

Research Grants
In household purchase decisions, gender inequality can have a significant impact on the final outcome, particularly for purchases such as homes or cars. This research project aims to investigate how gender inequality affects product choices in the Chinese auto market, the largest auto market in the world.
Research Grants on Gender Topics
Research Grants on Gender Topics. The study group will issue calls for proposals on specific topics. We will only consider proposals that aim to produce scholarly research. Applicants must be based at universities or research institutes. Amounts and duration will vary. Gender in the Economy. Advisory Board Members.
Funding Opportunities for Women's Health and Gender Research
The Johns Hopkins Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women's Health (JH-BIRCWH) was established to develop highly qualified, independent investigators to conduct women's health and sex and gender differences research. Meet our BIRCHW scholars and explore their work. Funding is available only to full-time junior faculty scholars from within Johns Hopkins University, with ...
Find Funding to Study Sexual and Gender Minority Health
Direct your questions to the scientific/research, peer review, or financial/grants management contacts in Section VII of your chosen FOA. To find other NIAID-supported funding opportunities related to sex, gender, and SGM, Search for "Gender" on the NIAID Opportunities List and use the form above the table to search for other keywords.
Gender Disparity in the Funding of Diseases by the U.S. National
Background: Gender bias has been an ongoing issue in health care, examples being underrepresentation of women in health studies, trivialization of women's physical complaints, and discrimination in the awarding of research grants. We examine here a different issue-gender disparity when it comes to the allocation of research funding among diseases. ...
How Big Is the Gender Gap in Science Research Funding?
Measuring the Funding Gender Gap. Grants are the lifeblood of biomedical research, and there is no more important funding source than the NIH, which invests nearly $40 billion each year. The first grant that scientists receive from the federal agency can help start their career on the right track. That's why Woodruff and Uzzi, along with and ...
Is there gender bias in research grant success in social sciences
Despite growing attention to gender disparities in higher education, women in academia still receive less research funding and recognition. Previous research on this gender gap has focused on ...
Fund for Gender Equality
The Fund for Gender Equality (FGE) has one guiding purpose: to support national, women-led civil society organizations in achieving women's economic and political empowerment and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). An instrument for feminist philanthropy based on principles of accessibility, trust, and women's ownership, the Fund is a ...
Gender differences in peer reviewed grant applications, awards, and
Funding is needed to conduct most research and is key to scientists' success. For example, extramural funding was among the criteria for tenure and promotion in the majority of a random sample of 92 biomedical sciences faculties, selected from among the top 852 universities in the world based on publication productivity [].Funded applications reflect positive evaluations of the significance ...
PDF Gender, Race/Ethnicity and Research Funding
This paper examines recent data on gender and race/ethnicity differences in research funding. Data on gender differences in funding in the United States finds few instances where female investigators are disadvantaged. In fact, female investigators are more likely to receive research funding at the National Science Foundation and equally likely ...
Gender Disparity in Grants and Awards at the National Institute of
Research grants: awards by gender and percentage to females. Research grants are defined as extramural awards made for research centers, research projects, Small Business Innovation Research/Small Business Technology Transfer (SBIR/STTR), and other research grants. Research Grants are defined by the following activity codes: R, P, M, S, K, U ...
Funding
To support The Center for Research in Feminist, Queer, and Transgender Studies and GSWS Program's goal of increasing the visibility and impact of gender, sexuality and women's studies scholarship across the University, FQT and GSWS provide financial and in-kind support to many campus-wide events each year.
PDF Is there gender bias in research grant success in social sciences
Table 1 presents the changes of GRF/ECS in 2015/2016 to 2020/2021. Over this study period, the gender composition of eligible applicants for GRF/ECS grants in FOSS was about 57.4% men and 42.6% ...
What We Fund
The Gender Fund is Co-Impact's second fund, aiming to raise and grant US $1 billion and provide predominantly women-led locally-rooted organizations, in Africa, Asia and Latin America, with large-scale, long-term, and flexible funding. This method of funding is integral to creating more just and inclusive systems and shifting harmful gender norms that prevent progress. The … Continued
PA-18-729: Research on the Health of Transgender and Gender
This funding opportunity announcement (FOA) calls for research on the health of transgender and gender nonconforming people. Transgender and gender nonconforming people encompass individuals whose gender identity differs from the sex on their original birth certificate, including individuals who are making or who have made a transition from being identified as one gender to the other, as well ...
FACT SHEET: Biden-Harris Administration Advances Equality and
Advancing health equity research on gender-affirming care. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced that it will increase funding for research on gender-affirming procedures to further ...
Find Funds Now: 355 Funders for International Gender Equality
The Philanthropy Women Gender Equality Funder Database is a unique data hub that aggregates over 700 listings of foundations, funds, and grantmakers.Our database provides contact and querying information as well as real-time news from the funders (when available) via live Twitter feed. All grantmakers in the PW Funder Database are doing gender equality work.
Sex and gender in science
Neglecting sex and gender in research is a public-health risk. ... Women's health research lacks funding - these charts show how. Conditions that affect women more than men garner less funding ...
Gender contributes to personal research funding success in The ...
Here we report evidence of gender bias in personal research funding for early career scientists. The importance of equal gender representation is widely acknowledged, for several reasons. First, it can resolve historic inequalities and provide equal opportunities (the "moral case for diversity") ( 5, 6 ).
Research
Sourcing for regional and country practice-focused research grants in Africa, Asia, and Latin America in 2022-23. Through the Gender Fund, we aim to make a significant contribution to the body of evidence on how to advance women's leadership and gender equality at scale by strengthening practitioner-oriented research and learning.
Study Examines Gender Disparity in Science Research Funding
In addition to the research funding gap, their findings illustrate a persisting gender disparity: "Women haven't entered the tenured ranks in biomedical sciences at a rate commensurate to that of their entrance into the field.". For the past three decades, that probability has been about 20 percent for women and nearly 40 percent for men ...
Sexual & Gender Minority Research Office
The Sexual & Gender Minority Research Office (SGMRO) coordinates sexual and gender minority (SGM)-related research and activities by working directly with the NIH Institutes, Centers, and Offices. The Office was officially established in September 2015 within the NIH Division of Program Coordination, Planning, and Strategic Initiatives (DPCPSI).
Grants and Resources for Women and Gender
Grants and Resources for Women and Gender. View the latest grant funding and resources in the area of Women and Gender for NGOs, companies ... 30-Jun-2024 UNU-WIDER requests research proposals for its Inequality over the life course project inviting original research which speaks to this project's core themes of intergenerational mobility and ...
2023-2024 Grantees
Gender disparities in leadership remain a persistent challenge even in the most egalitarian societies and well-meaning organizations. In explaining why this inequality exists—and persists—past research has pointed to the "Big Two" or that tend to describe how men and women are stereotypically seen by others.
Faculty Research Grants
The Gender Institute offers grants to UB faculty to support research and/or curriculum development that exemplifies high quality, innovative scholarship related to women, gender, and sexuality. The Institute is particularly interested in supporting projects that are collaborative and/or interdisciplinary and those that will lead to applications for an external award. Grants range from $1,000 ...
Study: gender gaps persist for female scientists
Study: Gender Gaps Persist for Female Scientists. The number of female biomedical researchers is increasing and so is the share of grants they receive, according to a paper published in Nature Biotechnology last week. However the majority of the money is awarded to senior female scientists, leaving their younger female peers with fewer ...
Nastasia Paul-Gera and Shelby House Receive Simpson Center Funding for
GWSS graduate student Nastasia Paul-Gera and Shelby House from Anthropology have received funding from the Simpson Center for the Humanities' Spring funding round. Their new Graduate Research Cluster, More-than-Human Worlds, is one of nine research clusters to be funded for the 2024-2025 academic year.
Government of Canada invests in cutting-edge research and the next
This announcement is apart of more than $800 million in funding that will go to 24 science and research organizations across Canada. The creation of the Strategic Science Fund (SSF) was announced in Budget 2019 as a way to make federal investments in third-party science and research more effective by assessing applicants using a framework of principles for allocating federal funding.
Opinion
Opinion Writer. American women made significant progress toward closing the gender pay gap in the second half of the 20th century, but that gap has barely budged over the past two decades. In 2022 ...
Government of Canada invests in research partnerships to push the
SSHRC Research Partnerships funding for social sciences and humanities research is intended for formal partnerships between postsecondary institutions and/or organizations of various types. More than $37 million in Partnership Grants was awarded to 15 projects over seven years, while 75 projects will receive a total of over $14 million in ...

Research Grants

To support rigorous research, GATE offers annual research grants to qualified applicants.

2022-2023 Grant Recipients

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Read about their research in VoxDev .

2020-2021 Grant Recipients

Read Rie's paper in International Journal of STEM Education .

2019-2020 Grant Recipients

Read their paper in Cognitive Science .

Read András' paper in American Sociological Review .

Read their paper in American Economic Journal .

Read their paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences .

Read their latest working paper.

Read their paper in Journal of Business Ethics .

Read their paper in Labour Economics .

View a short film based on their research here.

Read Mikhail's publication in The Review of Financial Studies .

Learn more about András' research in this article for Harvard Business Review.

Read Daehyun's paper in American Economic Review .

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Gender differences in peer reviewed grant applications, awards, and amounts: a systematic review and meta-analysis

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Inclusion and exclusion criteria

Extracted variables

Data analysis

Included studies

Award acceptance rate

Reapplication award acceptance rate

Award amounts

Proportions of applications

Proportions of reapplications

Proportions of awards

Proportions of awards after reapplications

Sensitivity analyses

Representation of eligible researchers by gender

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