Sisters are stronger together!

CHANGE's sister project GRANteD identifies factors that cause gender imbalances before, during, and after grant submission and sheds light on gender biases in grant allocation processes and its consequences for the researchers' careers. This research is of great importance to support implementation projects like CHANGE, which are aiming also on making academia and research more gender just, by taking a closer look at research funding and gender policies in our seven countries.

In the end, both projects will come up with policy briefs to recommend needed strategies and changes in policies and practices to make research funding and grant allocation more gender fair. Thus, researchers from these two project teams — Helene Schiffbänker (JR, Austria), Janne Haack and Madlen Baumert (IFAM, Germany), Hana Himi and Maya Ashkenazi (BBC, Israel), Sandra Karner and Anita Thaler (IFZ, Austria) — joined forces and build on previous knowledge exchanges to share insights on empirical data and stakeholder feedback. They agreed that the diversity of the academic and research landscape (for instance teaching colleges, industrial research etc.) has to be considered, when research and grant proposals are evaluated. On a more general level, we have to ask how the ‘ideal researcher' is seen, who receives funding. Is a traditional and biased image of excellence hindering fair grant allocation and funding of original, new research ideas?