The concept of Gender Balance in grants

By Despoina Mademtzoglou, Project Manager – GO

In grants and - more generally - research projects, Gender Balance means ensuring that research and leadership roles are equitably shared. Integrating varied perspectives and experiences fosters innovation. However, historically, women have faced barriers in securing grants or occupying decision-making roles in grants, such as coordinator or General Assembly member. Various funding organization policies aim to bridge this gap, for example with evolving evaluation criteria, dedicated grants for women-led initiatives, and emphasis on Gender Balance. Since 2023, Institut Pasteur’s Grants Office and DEI organize an annual event on Grants & Gender (keep an eye on the BIP for this year’s edition).  

Gender Balance is expected by most funders, including the ANR and the European Commission, at two levels: 

• the composition of the research team and -in collaborative projects- the consortium of research teams. This applies to the people implementing the project, doing experiments, analyzing data, presenting results, co-authoring publications, etc. 

• leadership roles, such as the coordinator/PD-PI/scientific project lead*, Work-Package leaders, General Assembly members, Scientific Advisory Board members, Data & Safety Monitoring Board members, etc.  

*funder-dependent term for the researcher who leads the entire project and - in multi-partner projects - the consortium. 

Focus on European Commission grants: 

1. organizations cannot apply for grants unless they have a Gender Equality Plan - GEP - in place (more on Institut Pasteur's GEP here),  

2. the gender of each researcher is indicated at the time of drafting the proposal,  

3. gender balance of involved researchers is used as the third criterion to prioritize proposals that otherwise scored similarly.  

Gender Balance is not to be confused with the Gender Dimension, another aspect that is central for funding organizations. Gender Balance refers to research personnel, while Gender Dimension refers to the analyzed research participants, animals, or cells. You can find the Grants Office’s guidance on Gender Balance and Gender Dimension at ePasteur here.