Investigators themselves also have a role to play to do the best possible work and try to change the system. “Advocate for others,” she said. That included advocating for others in groups that you may not be part of – which can be easier in some respects than advocating for a group that you are in.
“Funders should evaluate projects, not people,” Jennifer L. Raymond, PhD, and Miriam B. Goodman, PhD, both professors at Stanford (Calif.) University wrote in a comment in The Lancet special issue. They suggested that people-based funding had been gaining popularity but that funders would be better off funding by project to achieve scientific and clinical goals. “Assess the investigator only after double-blind review of the proposed research is complete,” they suggested. “Reduce the assessment of the investigator to a binary judgment of whether or not the investigator has the expertise and resources needed do the proposed research.”
During a panel discussion at The Lancet event, Cassidy R. Sugimoto, PhD, associate professor of informatics at Indiana University in Bloomington and a program director for the Science and Innovation Policy Program at the National Science Foundation (NSF) observed that data on gender equality in research funding were already being collected and will be used to determine how best to adjust funding policies.
“Looking from the 1980s to the present, women make up shy of 20% of the funds given by the National Science Foundation,” Dr. Sugimoto said. “That’s improved over time, and it’s at 28% currently, which is less than their authorship.”
Tammy Clifford, PhD, vice president of research programs at the CIHR observed that data collection was “a critically important step, but of course that’s not the only step,” she said. “We need to look at and analyze the data regularly, and then when you see things that are not on track, you make changes.”
One of the changes the CIHR has made is to train people who are reviewing grant applications on factors that may unconsciously affect their decisions. “There are things to be done, and I don’t think we are quite there yet, but we are committed to continually looking at those data, to making the changes that are required.”
Representing the Wellcome Trust, Ed Whiting, director of policy and chief of staff, said that the funding of projects led by female investigators was moving in the right direction. He noted that there was still a lower rate of applications from women for senior award levels, but that the panels that decide upon the funding were moving toward equal gender representation. The aim was to get to a 50/50 female to male ratio on the panels by 2020, he said; it is was at 46%-52% in 2018.
Dr. Witteman and all other commentators had no financial disclosures.
SOURCE: Witteman HO et al. Lancet. 2019. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(18)32611-4