Image: National Health and Medical Research Council
Revised funding guidelines on the table for Australian health research council’s grant schemes
Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council seems almost certain to change its guidelines to address gender disparities in its grant programmes.
In an online session on 24 February, NHMRC chief executive Anne Kelso (pictured) told more than 250 stakeholders from the health research community that the council was “serious” about making changes to advance gender equality.
Kelso outlined gender balance issues in the council’s Investigator Grants programme. She said that at L3, the top level, there were four male applicants for every female applicant.
The council has already made changes to some of its grants, including removing the “track record” requirement from its Ideas Grants and introducing “structural priority funding” to boost the number of Investigator Grants awarded to women.
But the trend in the first three rounds of Investigator Grants, which fund work and career development for individuals, has been a continued preponderance of men, particularly at the higher levels. Across the NHMRC’s four areas of research, more men applied for and won grants in basic science and clinical research, with women more often successful in public health and health services research.
Kelso said the council wanted to ensure that there was sector backing for any changes: “If we don’t have broad sector support then will there be a backlash that undermines our ability to do anything at all?” she asked.
“We will need to make a decision about exactly what to do, whether we are developing a special measure” or other ways of addressing gender issues, followed by consultations and guideline reviews, she said.
The council formed a dedicated Women in Health Science Committee a decade ago. The 2021-24 members of the committee are due to meet for the first time this week.
Number one issue
Steve Wesselingh, who chairs the council’s Research Committee, said that better balance was “a really critical issue, a really important issue for the NHMRC and one which has to be solved”.
He added: “In the new triennium [from 2021 to 2024], this issue will be the number one issue for the Research Committee to consider.”
The seminar also heard from some participants that the home institutions of applicants, such as universities and government research institutes, should take some responsibility for gender issues. One possibility raised was requiring them to submit gender-balanced numbers of applications.
The session followed a communiqué this month outlining the NHMRC’s concerns about gender equality in its grants programme. It said that the “NHMRC does not have a settled position on the best way to address this problem and is open to considering a range of possible changes, some of which would be more feasible than others”.
Non-gender-specific applicants would have to be taken into account in any solution, the communiqué said.
Some attendees raised other issues affecting women, such as the NHMRC’s “relative to opportunity” policy and whether it sufficiently recognised the impact of women’s childcare and other responsibilities.
Kelso said that any changes to funding guidelines would be drafted in consultation and would need government approval.
Another webinar is planned for 3 March.