Why Do Fewer Women Than Men Apply for Grants After Their Phds?

Abstract

In spring 2013, the Society for American Archaeology created the Task Force on Gender Disparities in Archaeological Grant Submissions because of an apparent disparity in the rates of senior (post-PhD) proposal submissions by men and women to archaeology programs at the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. Although NSF success rates for men and women between 2009 and 2013 were roughly equal, the number of senior women archaeology submissions was half that of men. Given the documented increase in the proportion of women in academic archaeology, this representation of women seemed low. Moreover, submissions for NSF doctoral dissertation improvement grants were evenly divided between men and women. Statistics for Wenner-Gren noted the same general disparity in archaeology. This study examines and integrates a variety of data sources, including interviews with post-PhD women, to determine whether or not there is a problem in research grant submissions. Although the results indicate that there is a problem, it is multifaceted. Women are not well represented at research-intensive universities, and some women instead practice what we term “scaffolding” to integrate smaller pots of money to accomplish their research. Recommendations are provided for female applicants, academic departments, the Society for American Archaeology, and granting agencies.

Why we publish where we do: Faculty publishing values and their relationship to review, promotion and tenure expectations

“…Relatedly, men are more likely to rate research as important to their career advancement than are women, suggesting that women may be turning away from research in their careers [31] even though they perceive that research is valued in the RPT process. However, it is also possible that women are more cost sensitive and value the number of publications because in some cases, women submit fewer grants [32,33] and also receive fewer grants [34]. Since grants provide funding for publications, and often include number of publications as a criteria of evaluation, this may explain some of our findings.…”

Creating and Supporting a Harassment- and Assault-Free Field School

“…Despite this fact, disparities in gender equity remain with respect to academic leadership and tenure-track appointments (Ceci and Williams 2011;Clauset et al 2015;Moss-Racusin et al 2012). This holds true for archaeology (Goldstein et al 2017;Jalbert 2019). Furthermore, as is the case with many disciplines with field-oriented research, archaeology holds an underlying perception-among the public and within the field-that archaeological fieldwork is conducted, investigated, and reported by men ( Bardolph 2014;Bardolph and VanDerwarker 2016;Moser 2007).…”

Who Writes about Archaeology? An Intersectional Study of Authorship in Archaeological Journals

“…Following Gero, the NSF's Archaeology Program Director, John Yellen (1991), shared data showing that in the 1989 fiscal year, women both submitted fewer proposals (15%) and had lower success rates than men did (21% compared to men's 27%), which led to serious imbalances in who received funding for archaeological research. More recently, members of the SAA's Committee on the Status of Women in Archaeology demonstrated that these imbalances are much smaller now, nearly three decades after Yellen's report, but that senior research grants are still primarily won by men due to much higher submission rates in fiscal years , 2008, and 2013(Goldstein et al 2018).…”