Northwestern University Study Finds Gender Gap in First-Time National Institutes of Health Grant Amounts

A new study by scholars at Northwestern University in Illinois examined gender differences in the size of National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant awards to first-time awardees. Researchers analyzed grants to first-time grantees made by the NIH from 2006 to 2017. Women made up 44 percent of the grant recipients.

The investigators found that first-time grant recipients who were men received a median grant of $165,721. For women first-time grant recipients, the median grant was $126,615. Thus, the median funding for first-time male grant recipients was 31 percent higher than the median amount awarded to women who received their first NIH grants.

The researchers also broke down the data for institutions in the Ivy League and the large mostly state-operated research universities that are grouped into the Big 10 conference. They found that the median first-time grant for male researchers at Ivy League institutions was $71,073. Women researchers in the Ivy league received a median first-time NIH grant of $52,190.

At Big 10 research universities, the gender gap was huge. The median first-time grant for men was $148,076. For women, the median grant award was $66,365.

The full study, “Comparison of National Institutes of Health Grant Amounts to First-Time Male and Female Principal Investigators,” was published on the website of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). It may be accessed here.