New scheme to drive gender equity in research funding and investigator grants

Medical: In a joint statement, Mark Butler MP, Minister for Health and Aged Care and Senator Katy Gallagher, Minister for Women announced that from 2023 the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) will award equal numbers of Investigator Grants to women and men in a new intervention to address gender inequities in research funding.

The Investigator Grant scheme is NHMRC’s largest funding scheme and a major investment in Australia’s health and medical research workforce. The scheme awards around $370 million in research funding each year.

The grants provide a 5-year fellowship and research support for outstanding researchers at all career stages. Relatively few women apply at the senior levels of the scheme, reflecting the many barriers that lead to their attrition from the research workforce.

Between 2019 and 2021, male applicants received about 35% more grants and 67% more total funding (about $95 million extra per year) than female applicants.

The new initiative will see NHMRC introduce a special measure under the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 and set targets to fund an equal number of leadership grants for women and men in the Investigator Grant scheme. 

For the first time, non-binary researchers will also be explicitly included in this and other measures to foster gender equity in NHMRC funding, recognising the systemic disadvantage that they experience.

NHMRC CEO Professor Anne Kelso AO said “As a researcher myself for many years, one day I had the experience of looking up from the lab bench and realising that many of my female peers had disappeared. Where had they gone? And then when I joined NHMRC, I was really shocked to see our own funding data and the continuing the disappearance of female researchers.

“Despite good progress, gender inequities persist across the health and medical research sector. Disparities in funding of women and men in NHMRC’s flagship Investigator Grant scheme have highlighted the barriers that many women face as they seek to advance their research careers.” 

She added “An Investigator Grant can make all the difference to a researcher’s career. This is one of the reasons that gender equity in this scheme is so important if we are to build a diverse research sector. 

“The changes announced will provide more encouragement and opportunities for women and non-binary researchers to apply for and win these significant grants. With this support, we look forward to seeing better gender diversity at the most senior levels of Australian health and medical research in the years ahead.”

NHMRC has also welcomed the announcement from the Australian Government of the outcomes of this year’s round of Investigator Grants. More than $375 million has been awarded to support 225 emerging and established leaders in health and medical research across Australia to tackle our greatest health challenges.

Among recipients of the funding announced is Professor Dianna Magliano OAM, from the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, who will use her Investigator Grant to understand trends in the burden, risks and complications of diabetes in Australia.

Diabetes is a significant challenge confronting Australia’s health system, with an estimated 1.8 million Australians living with this chronic condition. 

Professor Magliano’s research will also investigate which interventions are most effective in managing patients with diabetes. 

This research will improve care for people with diabetes and ensure interventions are well targeted to limit the global health expenditure on diabetes.

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