Gender differences in Dutch research funding over time

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0297311

by petschge • 2 years ago

35 18 2 years ago

journals.plos.org

zdragnar2• 2 years ago

What should be taken away from this study? They found in two tiers no notable difference, and a slight advantage to women in the other, with the effect growing over time.

Then they state that this is all correlation, and we don't know about a dozen or two different variables such as whether the grant process self selects for more men to apply (and thus fail). No conclusion that men are disadvantaged may be drawn, they say.

Is this study worth building on? Why are people finding it interesting enough to vote it up to the front page?

What am I missing?

ars2• 2 years ago

There an ongoing desire to know if the different between men and women in the sciences is due to innate differences, or due to society causing a difference.

Research on this topic is rare, so when some is available people are very interested.

coffeeaddict1• 2 years ago

There an ongoing desire to know if the different between men and women in the sciences is due to innate differences, or due to society causing a difference.

Is it ongoing though? It seems to me that this is exceedingly rare and discouraged, given the political climate of most academic institutions in the western world.

apienx• 2 years ago

Overcorrecting after eons of patriarchal dominance is expected and not necessarily a bad thing IMHO. In some countries (e.g. Sweden), prioritising a certain gender over another for research funding is explicit (and widely accepted) public policy.

TulliusCicero• 2 years ago

I think it's pretty obviously a bad thing to discriminate in this way. Maybe it's understandable to experience some overcorrection, but that doesn't mean it's good.

algorias• 2 years ago

Overcorrecting is a bad thing. It means that you're explicitly and knowingly discriminating by gender, with a flimsy justification about the guilt of our ancestors.

wolverine876• 2 years ago

In what way do you see this program overcorrecting?

ars2• 2 years ago

If you want to overcorrect for a particular person who was discriminated against, that's one thing. But to overcorrect with people who did not themselves experience any discrimination, they are just in the same socially-popular category is itself discrimination and is just as bad.

bodiekane• 2 years ago

This makes no sense.

Everyone alive today has 50% female ancestors and 50% male ancestors. Regardless of your gender identity, your ancestry is equally balanced in terms of gender privilege.

Biasing for/against people today is just a new injustice, it doesn't retroactively fix the injustices of the past, and the individual being discriminated against wasn't alive or working during the time or place when people matching their demographic would have been advantaged.

wizzwizz42• 2 years ago

it doesn't retroactively fix the injustices of the past,

But it does help compensate for the injustices of the present. Culture is inertial: hundreds of years of tradition doesn't go away overnight, even if we no longer approve of it.

Euronews reports that the 2023 WebSummit survey found “more than 50 per cent of the 500 female participants saying they had experienced sexism in the workplace”, whereas “just six per cent of the male participants disagreed there was gender equality and 14 per cent said they neither agreed nor disagreed”. (The WebSummit website is awful, but if you really want a direct source: [1] links to Google Drive.) I wonder how much that effect is in play in the comments here.

[0] https://www.euronews.com/next/2024/02/11/four-in-five-men-in...

[1] https://websummit.com/blog/women-tech-workplace-gender-bias-...

ThrowawayTestr• 2 years ago

You're making the mistake of thinking discrimination is bad. You need to understand that sometimes discrimination is good, but only when it's towards men.

mc32• 2 years ago

The dead are not alive and the live are not dead.

We want to have a just system for the living.

Manuel_D• 2 years ago

Overcorrecting after eons of patriarchal dominance is expected and not necessarily a bad thing IMH

So the MRAs telling me feminists want to go beyond equality and advantage women over men are right!? I have been constantly told that was just a straw-man argument.

Gender equality is a vastly more popular position than privileging one over another. Openly stating that your goal is create gender inequality is an easy ticket to make your movement unappealing.

zdragnar2• 2 years ago

This is the same thinking behind affirmative action and DEI in hiring initiatives in the US. Positive discrimination is necessary to balance out negative discrimination, or so the thinking goes.

In American academic circles in particular, "equality" is out and "equity" is in.

8f2ab37a-ed6c• 2 years ago

There's a difference between demanding fairness and demanding vengeance.

misja111• 2 years ago

Where do you see the overcorrecting taking place here? Maybe I missed something, but all I can find in the article about the measures that were taken is this:

"From that point onwards, several measures were implemented to counter gender inequality in research funding. First, panelists in the TP got implicit bias training. At first, these trainings were given face to face, whereas nowadays all panelists watch a video that addresses implicit bias before they start with their evaluations. Second, the wording of the grant calls and instructions for panelists and reviewers changed. Van der Lee and Ellemers found that the majority of the wording was masculine, which led them to argue that the policy goal of NWO (achieving gender inequality) was not reflected by the instructions that those involved in the grant evaluation."

Gender differences in Dutch research funding over time

Related Stories