Women more likely than men to receive Vidi grant
At the Dutch Research Council NWO, women are slightly more likely than men to win a Vidi grant worth €850,000. But why?
It’s a pilot, says the announcement. Starting this fall, the NWO wants to award the prestigious Vidi research grants for experienced researchers more often to women. In cases of equal suitability, they will be given preference over a man.
“With this, we want to help women catch up by increasing the number of women in senior scientific positions,” says NWO board member Arfan Ikram. It is precisely at that step in their careers that many women leave science, is the thinking.
The Vidi grants are part of the NWO’s Talent Program, which distributes €190 million annually. Researchers can receive up to €850,000 to set up their own line of research.
Surprise
The announcement of preferential treatment for women provoked surprise from Leiden professor of physics Sense Jan van der Molen, who has studied the distribution of talent grants between men and women. Proportionally, women are now more numerous than men in the Veni program for recently promoted researchers. In the Vidi and Vici grants, there is no difference between men and women in the awarding of funds.
“We sent our article to the NWO three times, but never received a response,” tweeted Van der Molen, who wrote the article jointly with two others. “I find that disappointing, because we did all this work to map recent developments in a scientifically sound way to report them back to NWO.”
The Rathenau Institute came to similar conclusions. Women apply for grants less often but have the same chance of receiving one.
And soon they will have an even greater chance. The NWO will adjust the procedure to that end. To obtain a grant, researchers must write a proposal which is evaluated by outside experts. An NWO committee then considers the proposal and interviews the best applicants. Then everyone gets a score, and the highest scores receive the grants.
Those scores used to go to the decimal point, but starting this fall, they will be rounded to half points. So an 8.6 and an 8.4 will both become an 8.5. If men and women score equally close around the limit of awards, the woman wins.
Backlog
But why is the NWO doing this, if the problem does not lie with the NWO? Women are still at a disadvantage in science, but it does not seem to be due to NWO grant awards.
The research funder wants to promote equity throughout academia, the answer reads. “The NWO considers diversity and inclusion essential to advance science,” says a spokesperson. “It is important for different people to come together to illuminate topics from different perspectives. After all, this not only generates new ideas and creative thinking but also leads to a deeper, better understanding of topics and problems. High-quality research requires a diverse academic community.”
Aspasia
In addition, last year the Aspasia program ended, a program that since 2006 encouraged the advancement of dozens of female associate professors to senior university positions. The NWO wants to pursue the same goal but via mainstream grant programs.
“The pilot with the Vidi grants is a first step in NWO’s new policy on diversity, inclusion, and equality,” says the spokeswoman. “But we also understand that this is not just a task for us. The responsibility for increasing more diversity lies with all parties.”
The information officer does not know why Van der Molen and his co-authors did not receive a response. Something must have gone wrong, she says. There was no intention to ignore the article.
