Greetings, all. It's published!
The RAND Corporation report that assessed gender differences in the distribution of external Federal research and development funding was released on 14 September 2005.
As you may recall, thanks to amendments inserted by Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) into the bill to reauthorize the National Science Foundation for FY03-FY07 (signed by President Bush in December 2002; Public Law No: 107-36), the funding distribution report was one of two requested by Congress with respect to gender differences for male and female faculty. The second study (Gender Differences in Careers of Science, Engineering, and Mathematics Faculty) is underway by the National Research Council; the next committee meeting is scheduled for 6-7 October 2005.
The PDF of the RAND Corp's 6-page report "Gender Differences in Major Federal External Grant Programs" is available for free at (link).
As many of us predicted, RAND reports "no differences in the amount of funding requested or awarded" with respect to gender by the National Science Foundation (RAND looked at grants funded from 2001-2003). This lack of gender difference was also observed for grants awarded by the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture.
And for the National Institutes of Health? Not so fast!
Even after eliminating very large awards and controlling for age, academic degree, institution, grant type, institute, and year, RAND reports that women receive only 83% of what men receive in NIH grants.
The release of the RAND report has spurred Senator Wyden to add an amendment to the Commerce, Science, and Justice Appropriations legislation currently before the U.S. Senate in order to add RAND's recommendations with respect to data collection/disaggregation by the federal R&D funding agencies.
As noted in Senator Wyden's press release on the RAND Corp. report and his proposed amendment, "the Departments of Defense and Energy kept so little information about their $9 billion in annual grant funding that RAND was forced to drop those agencies from the study."
Senator Wyden further notes: "I don't see how Federal agencies can possibly be in compliance with Title IX if they don't even track the gender of their grant applicants, and Congress certainly can't oversee compliance without this basic information. It's time to make certain that these appropriated taxpayer dollars are being distributed in accordance with Federal law, in a way that gives a basic fair shake to every applicant."
Stay tuned!
all the best,
Debra
