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Dr Noam Tal-Perry is part of the Research on Research team, headed up by Dr Steven Wooding, and together with his colleagues Agata Czech and Becky Ioppolo, has published a report on gender disparity in grant funding within the University of Cambridge. The study, , shines a spotlight on funding application rate, size, and success rates for women and men researchers within the university, and the findings clearly indicate a large structural disparity between the genders alongside a very varied pattern of disparities at the point of application.

Dr Noam Tal-Perry is Official Fellow and postgraduate tutor at 51¸£ÀûÉç, Research Associate at the Research Strategy Office, University of Cambridge, and a member of the Research on Research Group. The research team behind the new report is based in the Research Strategy Office, working in association with the Bennett Institute for Public Policy.

Grant funding is critical for academics to be able to pursue their research agendas. If certain groups of academics, based on factors like race, gender, or socio-economic background, face higher barriers to securing funding, it can limit their ability to pursue research, advance their careers, and contribute to their academic fields. This can perpetuate cycles of inequality and result in a lack of diverse perspectives in research, which ultimately undermines the richness and inclusivity of academic inquiry.

When examined naively, the report shows that women researchers in the university tend to apply less often to funding opportunities, apply to smaller grants, and overall have less success in securing the grants than men. However, once the grade of the researcher and the School they are affiliated with are taken into account, the effect all but disappears, with some indication it even reverses in direction.

This underlines the importance of  structural disparity between the genders. Overall, women are underrepresented in higher grades, to varying degrees in the different Schools. As all the funding-related measures examined by the research team are positively correlated with grade, i.e. increase with higher grades, it creates an image that men outperform women. Similarly, as women are underrepresented in STEMM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths, and Medicine) disciplines, where application rates tend to be higher and grant sizes larger, the picture is confounded further.

Beyond this structural disparity, the team identified a varied pattern of disparities within grade and school categories, which has been changing over time. These include areas where men apply or succeed more, as well as areas in which women do, with a large number of areas showing no differences between the genders or spurious differences with little certainty. Thus, the results suggest a complex and nuanced relationship between gender and grant application.

The report suggests two routes should be explored in reducing gender disparities in grant funding – a closer examination of particular School and grade cases where gender disparities persist, alongside addressing the structural disparities highlighted, ensuring that all academics have equal opportunities to succeed in their research.

Exploring the relationship between research group structure and scientific output

Recently, Noam and his team were awarded a grant by the  for a research project that explores the relationship between research group structure and scientific output, an often overlooked factor of productivity.

Noam works alongside Dr Steven Wooding, Affiliated Researcher and in collaboration with the University of Montreal, Canada, to implement a unique approach to exploring the relationship between organisational team structure and research output by combining administrative, bibliometric, and qualitative data, from institutional-level to individual researcher-level information. Of particular interest, the team is planning to examine how the diversity within research team affects the type of science they produce.

Read more about their project