Gender Inequality in STEM

Last updated: 8 March 2023

The article explores: What do data say about women in STEM? What are the gender pay gaps? Do men win more research grants than women? How can women win more research funding? What does Gender Inequality look like in 83 countries? Gender gaps in commenting published research? What is the situation in Research and Innovation? Are women participating and contributing to it to the same extent as men? Or is the so-called ‘leaky pipeline’, the phenomenon of women dropping out of research and academic careers at a faster rate than men,?still prevalent? How can Gender Equality be promoted in science?

What do data say about women in STEM?

The European Union's She Figures 2018 reveal that (i) gender imbalance amongst researchers still remains as in 2015 only one third of the EU’s researchers were women; (ii) The proportion of women among doctoral graduates still varies among the different fields of education; in 2016, women doctoral graduates at EU level were over-represented in education (68 %), but under-represented in the field of information and communication technologies (21 %) and the fields of engineering and manufacturing and construction (29 %) (iii) women employed in research earn, on average, 17% less than their male colleagues; (iv) Women account for approximately 9% of European patent applications; (v) 1 in 3 authors of scientific publications is a woman; (vi) Women remain a minority in scientific and advisory boards of research funding organizations.

What are the gender pay gaps?

There is still a considerable gender pay gap in scientific R&D occupations. Across the EU-28, women in R&D earned on average 17 % less than their men colleagues in 2014, and the gender pay gap was found to widen with age (1). For example, in the United Kingdom, women’s annual salaries were between ￡3,000 (US$4,000) and ￡5,000 lower than those of men at the same level, in many cases because they started at a lower pay grade (2)

• The presence of women researchers seems to have an inverse relationship with the R&D expenditure per researcher; most of the countries that spent more per researcher had some of the lowest shares of women researchers (1)
• At the EU level, the proportion of women researchers working part-time was higher than that of men; 13 % of women researchers and 8 % of men researchers were working part-time in 2016. Furthermore, 8.1 % of women and 5.2 % of men researchers worked under contract arrangements considered as ‘precarious employment’ (1)

How does gender equality look like at the top of the academic ladder?

As they move up the academic ladder, women are less represented. In the EU-28 in 2016, women represented 48 % of doctoral students and graduates, 46 % of grade C academic positions, 40 % of grade B and 24 % of grade A academic positions. The gap between women and men was wider in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics); while women made up 37 % of doctoral students and 39 % of doctoral graduates, they held only 15 % of grade A academic positions. In the EU-28, the proportion of women among heads of institutions in the higher education sector increased from 20 % in 2014 to 22 % in 2017. For example, according to 2017 data, in 5 EU Member States, Lithuania (57% female), Bulgaria and Latvia (53%), Portugal (51%), Denmark (50%) the majority of scientists and engineers were women. This compares to Hungary and Luxembourg (25%), Finland (29%), Germany (33%) (14)

Furthermore, in 2017, women made up 27 % of the members of boards of research organisations, while when focusing on board leaders alone, the proportion of women decreased to 20 % (1)

• In the EU-28, women were still under-represented in the writing of scientific papers. Between 2013 and 2017, the ratio of women to men among authors of scientific publications in the EU was on average one to two. However, this ratio is slowly improving and it has been increasing by almost 4 % per year since 2008. The highest women to men ratio of authorship was observed in the fields of medical and agricultural sciences, where a little over eight women authors corresponded to 10 men authors. Moreover, women are still strongly under-represented among patent inventors; between 2013 and 2017 in the EU, the women to men ratio of patent inventors was on average just over one to ten.
• Between 2011-2015, only 12% of Patent Applications in the EU were filed by women in STEM compared to 88% by men. Eva Kaili, who chairs the STOA body, said that one way to get women more involved was to improve the ability to work from home.
• Recent data show that only limited progress has been made to Gender Equality in STEM since 2011. Women in STEM in the 28 EU Member States made up 47% of PhD graduates, 33% of researchers and 21% of Grade A researchers

• A strong gender gap in the composition of the inventors’ teams was also observed in the EU-28, where the most frequent composition of the teams was all men (47 %), followed by those with just one male inventor (33%). A final overall observation for EU countries was a slight gender gap in receiving research grants. The funding success rate was higher for men team leaders than women team leaders by 3.0 percentage points.
• Gender Equality is not yet fulfilled as data from the She Figures 2012 report, a major EU publication reveal that female graduates often opt out of science after they have completed a PhD

• There are now 1 million women in core science, technology, education (STEM) occupations in the UK. However, the proportion of tech roles filled by women has flatlined at 16% since 2009 – so further action is needed to encourage more women to get into a category of jobs which make up a quarter of the STEM workforce (2)
• The most recent EU data show that only limited progress has been made to Gender Equality in STEM since 2011 as women in STEM in the 28 EU Member States made up 47% of PhD graduates, 33% of researchers and 21 % of Grade Researchers

What are the gender pay gaps?

In the United States, female PIs at the Big Ten universities received a median of $66 365 vs $148 076 for male PIs (median difference, ?$81 711 [95% CI, ?$92 734 to ?$67 450];?P?< .001). Similarly, women at Ivy League universities received statistically significantly smaller grant amounts ($52 190 for women vs $71 703 for men; median difference, ?$19 513 [95% CI, ?$31 310 to ?$6976];?P?< .001). At the top 50 NIH-funded institutions, first-time female awardees received significantly smaller grant amounts ($93 916 for women vs $134 919 for tmen; median difference, ?$41 003 [95% CI, ?$47 052 to ?$31 316];?P?< .001)

The gender pay gap is not limited to the United States as a survey 50,000 recipients of research-related PhDs, from 428 institutions, highlighted US$18,000 gender pay gap where female PhD recipients in the United States expect to earn less than male colleagues (4) with key points:

• Men accounted for about 75% of doctoral degrees in those fields (a proportion that has barely changed since 2007), and expected to earn $113,000, compared with $99,000 for women
• Lower-paying disciplines showed more equity: in the social sciences, for example, men expected to earn $66,000, compared with $62,000 for women
• Men didn’t always come out on top as women in chemistry expected to earn $85,000, $5,000 more than their male counterparts.

Similarly, a survey of 365 early-career principal investigators (PIs) who started labs in Britain between 2012 and 2018 found that many lacked the support they need to push their careers to the next stage (5). Moreover:

• Women generally had access to less lab space and supervised fewer PhD students and postdocs than did men, particularly if they were also a lecturer
• Around one-quarter of researchers surveyed felt they had received no mentorship, and women without mentors reported the lowest levels of optimism about their future careers

Do men win more research grants than women?

Female researchers less likely to win major medical grants than males as:

• In the United States, as from 2006 to 2017, 53 903 NIH grants were awarded to first-time PIs across all 225 NIH grant types and 2766 institutions. Of first-time PIs, 43.6% were female, similar to the female enrollment level of 38% in US MD-PhD programs during the same period. Female PIs at the Big Ten universities received a median of $66 365 vs $148 076 for male PIs (median difference, ?$81 711 [95% CI, ?$92 734 to ?$67 450];?P?< .001). (6)
• In Australia, as only 29.4% of senior women (5 out of 17) who applied for a grant were successful, compared with 49.3% (37 out of 75) male applicants who had the same level of experience. Success rates were higher for men than for women (14.9% versus 11.3%) The analysis of 34,770 researchers found that (i) only 1 in 3 of grant applications and awards went to women and (ii) high attrition rates among women in the early stages of their careers (7)
• In the UK, in the 2018-2019 Research Funding period: 71% of UKRI funds were awarded to projects led by men with?women?being awarded only 27% of funds (i.e. male group leaders got ￡1.5 billion while?women in science?got ￡0.6 billion) (15)

How can women win more research funding?

An analysis that looked at almost 7,000 proposals submitted to the Grand Challenges Explorations program of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation between 2008 and 2017 found that:

• grant reviewers favor ‘broad’ words used more often by men, but proposals using those terms don’t produce better research
• men tended to use ‘broad’ words, such as “control”, “detection” and “bacteria”, more often. These were defined as words that appeared at the same rate in proposals regardless of the topic. By contrast, women favored ‘narrower’ or more topic-specific terms, such as “community”, “oral” and “brain” (see ‘Broad language’). The authors linked broad words to higher review scores, and narrow ones with lower scores (8)

What does Gender Inequality look like in 83 countries?

See https://twitter.com/BRAINCURES/status/1249653287739109377?s=20?

Gender gaps in commenting published research?

See https://twitter.com/BRAINCURES/status/1249701629387038721?s=20?

What do NIH Funding trajectories look like?

Analysis of 34,770 NIH funding trajectories reveals that men remained in the funding pool at slightly higher rates than women. See

Men received four times as many ERC Advanced Research Grants than women. See

How can Gender Equality be promoted in science?

See references 10-12.

Social Media

@EUScienceInnov @EU_H2020 #EqualityInResearch #UnionOfEquality #WIPrizeEU #H2020 #Agenda2030 #WIPrize @eu_commission @MarchForScience (342K) @WomenWhoCode (273K) @BBCWomansHour (220K) @500womensci (54K) @thewisecampaign (34K) @WomenInSTEM20 (17K) @MillionStem (7K) @women_in_ai (7K) @WomenInBio (6K) @WomenInSTEMAu (4K) @sciencemarchnyc (3K) @WISE_YPB (3K) @SciRising (1k) @GM4Women2028 (1K) @SheSpeaksSci (1K)

@lisaharveysmith (23K) @HelenPankhurst (11K) @sachiefsci (4K) @DebMKelly (4K) @UoMEandD_Sarah (1K) @Dr_GhinaHalabi (1K)

@IndivisibleTeam (294K) @RogueNASA @mrjohnofarrell (43K)

#WomenInSTEM #WISEConference2021 #WomenInSTEM20 #AdaLovelace #ScienceRising #WIBmeet #womeninbio #WIBevents #SAScienceAwards

References

1. She figures 2018 - Publications Office of the EU (europa.eu)
2. Else H. 2019. Female scientists get less money and staff for their first labs. Nature.?https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00933-0
3. 2019 Workforce Statistics – One million women in STEM in the UK - Welcome to the WISE Campaign
4. Woolston C. 2019. Scientists’ salary data highlight US$18,000 gender pay gap. Nature.?https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00220-y
5. Else H. 2018. Leaky pipeline for women scientists dries up after they win first big grant. Nature.?https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05759-w
6. Oliveira, DF et al. 2019. Comparison of National Institutes of Health Grant Amounts to First-Time Male and Female Principal Investigators.?JAMA.?2019;321(9):898-900?https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2726973
7. Nogrady B. 2019. Female researchers in Australia less likely to win major medical grants than males. Nature.?https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03038-w
8. Else H. 2019. Male researchers’ ‘vague’ language more likely to win grants. Nature.?https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01402-4
9. She figures 2018 - Publications Office of the EU (europa.eu)
10. Promoting Gender Equality in Research and Innovation | Horizon 2020 (europa.eu)
11. Bridging the Gender Pay Gap - WISE CXO Breakfast 27 June 2018, hosted by Network Rail - Welcome to the WISE Campaign
12. Gender Equality in Academia and Research - GEAR tool | EIGE (europa.eu)
13. Campaign | Million STEM (1mwis.com)
14. Women in science and technology - Products Eurostat News - Eurostat (europa.eu)
15. UKRI-FOI-2019.0112-FollowUpResponse.pdf

Further readings:

Women-led innovative tech startups take centre stage | Research and Innovation (europa.eu)