Gender Equality in Science Grants

The Biochemical Society has made three grants of £500 each available for projects which support and address issues relating to gender inequality in science. One of the Society’s priorities is actively addressing such issues, through increasing awareness of this subject and promoting systems through which the surrounding issues can be effectively addressed. Further details on the Biochemical Society’s position on gender equality in science can be found in our Position Statement.

The deadline for applications for the 2012 scheme has now passed and details on the funded applications is available below.

Applications are assessed by a panel comprised of members of the Biochemical Society's Policy Committee and Society staff. Assessments take place within 4 weeks of the deadline and applicants are notified in writing. Feedback is provided to unsuccessful applicants.

The scheme is non-prescriptive and we consider all proposals, but some examples of how grant money could be used include: supporting the mainstreaming of gender in science issues; identifying and promoting best practice; generating data which looks at existing schemes and supporting mentoring, training or a forum or network in a sustainable way.
 
For full details please refer to the Standard Conditions of the grant scheme document, which contains more guidance and background information. Detail includes judging criteria, what the Society will and will not fund and reporting requirements. If you have trouble downloading this document, or any further questions, please contact James Lush, Policy Officer (James.Lush@biochemistry.org; +44 (0) 20 7685 2453).

For reference, the application form can be found in the Grants section of our website.
 

Three projects have been funded from the round that closed on 31 March 2012. These are detailed below:

Career Development Day - We have awarded Cambridge AWiSE (Association for Women in Science and Engineering) £500 to offer three places at their forthcoming Career Development Day to women who may not otherwise be able to attend. Applications for funded places are currently invited from individuals in academia or SMEs/start-ups in biochemistry or the molecular biosciences, or those wishing to return to a career in these areas. Further details on the funded places are available here. Non-members may apply and unsponsored places are available to all women in STEM. The event will be held on Friday 22nd June. The report of the 2010 event is available here.

APEER - Rachel Carol, founder and Director of Emendo Bioscience will investigate how scientific journal editors recruit peer reviewers from a gender perspective. A proposed survey will give a snapshot of current practice in selecting peer reviewers and reveal whether women scientists have equal opportunities as peers in vetting where, when and how research is published. The aims are that the methods of recruiting peer reviewers will become transparent and that areas where gender bias exists will be revealed. The grant will be used to pay for designing and producing promotional materials (conference poster, flyers and badges) and internet and administrative costs. There will be a dedicated blog during the course of the project.

Gender inclusion in scholarly literature - Mirjam Curno, Managing Editor of the Journal of the International AIDS Society, plans a systematic literature search to review the frequency of women in clinical trials and furthermore, to analyse the proportion of publications from clinical trials that provide sex-disaggregated data and gender analysis and to determine whether this has changed over time. The data generated can highlight the extent to which scholarly literature fails to report and analyze data for subpopulations. Furthermore, this study aims to determine if there is a gender gap in editorial policies and international ethical guidelines. The findings from this study will be used to make recommendations to international normative bodies and journals in life sciences to address this issue. The results will be published in an open access journal, for which the Biochemical Society grant will support payment of the publication fee.

Further information and links to project websites will be made available as the projects develop.