Controversial Dutch study shows women continue to face gender bias in academia

Ars Technica : According to a study commissioned by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, women have a lower chance of winning early career grants than men. Romy van der Lee and Naomi Ellemers of Leiden University analyzed 2823 grant applications from young researchers over the period 2010–12. They found that the success rate for women was 14.9% while that for men was 17.7%. The researchers say the women received less favorable evaluations and lower ratings in the “quality of researcher” category than the men. In addition, they say, the documents provided during the grant application process contained gender-exclusive language that favored male applicants. However, the study has been criticized, most notably by statistician Casper Albers of the University of Groningen, who wrote a blog post detailing what he sees as some of its problems. He says the study researchers have fallen victim to a classical statistical trap, called Simpson’s paradox , and their conclusions don’t hold up when the data are broken down by discipline or when one looks at a wider time frame. One of his contentions is that because more women tended to apply in fields that had the lowest success rates, such as medical and social sciences, it only appears that women overall were less successful.