When requesting funding for research grants, women ask for “substantially” less than their male counterparts, a study has found.

The study, published in the Elsevier-owned Social Science Research Network, has revealed that female researchers request about 5.4 per cent less than comparably qualified males submitting similarly rated proposals.

The paper, titled “”, was uploaded to the open-access preprint platform on 24 September.

The researchers analysed hundreds of individual grant application data points from two Danish philanthropic funders: the Novo Nordisk Foundation and the Carlsberg Foundation, between 2011 and 2022. Both organisations run competitive schemes, supporting investigator-initiated research across natural and social sciences.

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The researchers found that there was a roughly 7 per cent gender gap in awarded funding and that the 5.4 per cent “ask gap” accounts for “roughly three-quarters” of that.

“The similarity between the requested and awarded gaps suggests that much of the gender difference in received funding is already present before final funding decisions are made,” the authors say. The study highlights that most previous research on the topic has examined gender gap award rates, rather than gaps at the proposal level.

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They write that their findings could potentially have a “large” impact because “grants shape lab size, training capacity, equipment, data collection, and the ability to pursue longer-term agendas, so even modest differences in requested funding can accumulate over careers”.

Applying their 5.4 per cent ask-gap estimate to women-led projects at major public funders would translate into roughly $600 million in forgone annual requested funding for National Institutes of Health Research Project Grants, the authors predict. Their calculations are based on a $26.5 billion funding pool, with women accounting for 38 per cent of recipients.

The paper also found that, where upper limits are typically imposed on funding, “asking for less within such bounds should not make a proposal more competitive”.

They also found that the gender gap “narrows with experience” and “shrinks to zero by repeat applicants’ last observed application”. By contrast the ask gap is “largest among early-career applicants, first-time applicants, and applicants with weaker prior records or less previous funding experience”, the study says.

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The researchers also note that the gap is partially reduced in mixed-gender co-applicant teams, “suggesting that teams transmit some, but not all, of the tacit knowledge needed to calibrate funding requests”.

Co-authors of the paper are Astrid Thomsen and HC Kongsted at Copenhagen Business School, Valentina Tartari at the Stockholm School of Economics and Lorenzo Palladini at the American University of Beirut.

frances.jones@timeshighereducation.com