Hi! This week, @tigerinstemm will be talking about a new report which has been released by EPSRC about the gender balance of their grant portfolio: https://epsrc.ukri.org/files/aboutus/epsrcunderstandingourportfolio-agenderperspectivereport/

TIGERS have been asking questions about this since we started, and some of our members asked these questions for *years* even before that. We’re really glad to see some hard data!

So what are the key findings of the report?
1. Women are under-represented in EPSRC’s Principal Investigator applicant pool - and the under-representation is more marked at higher grant values.

2. If women apply to EPSRC for large grants, they are less likely than men to be successful. This is masked by data which considers success rates only considering numbers of grants, not their value.

(This problem is not reducing as time goes on. Calculating award rate (i.e. success rate) by value, there was little difference between men and women in 2007 - 2009, but women have experienced lower award rates by value than men in almost every year since.)

3. Even when women do apply for large grants, the amounts they are applying for are not as large as the amounts that men apply for.

4. EPSRC claim that there are “No noteworthy differences by gender in costs added by applicants” - i.e. men and women apply for the same things. But they also say women are A FACTOR OF 3 less likely to apply for funds for new equipment. We need to talk about why that is!

5. The EPSRC’s analysis of the salaries which applicants request on grants is a very effective illustration of the gender pay gap. Using age as a proxy for career stage, we see men get paid more than women at similar career stages, and this effect increases with seniority level.

Over the next few days we’ll chat a bit more about these findings & also about what *isn’t* addressed by these data. In particular, the report isn’t able to tell us about non-binary genders or about intersectionality issues experienced by BAME, disabled and LGBTQ+ women.

First though, we’d love to hear your reactions to the data. More importantly, EPSRC would also like to hear what you think!

They’ve launched a survey to help them understand these data, addressing the existing gender-based barriers to applying for large grants. They'd like people of all genders to fill it in & it'd be great to get a big response going on this important issue. https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/KGN98VK 

We’ll be back later with some more commentary and questions on each of the key findings. In the meantime, #TellTheTiger your initial reaction to the data, by replying to this thread and do fill in the survey!!! https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/KGN98VK