Efforts to increase women representation in STEM fields have had modest success. Overall, women in STEM degree programs tend to graduate at parity with their male counterparts but are not equally represented in high level academic positions, a phenomenon often referred to as the “leaky pipeline”. This gender discrepancy is especially true for positions requiring independent research programs (e.g. tenure track) that are highly dependent on obtaining competitive research grants. Like many STEM fields, women are grossly underrepresented in agricultural research. The U.S. Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture (USDA-NIFA) is the USDA’s primary extramural science agency that administers funding for programs to advance agriculture-related sciences. The Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) is NIFA’s flagship granting program that funds agricultural research, education, and extension efforts. Our objectives were to 1) determine the representation of women, compared to men, funded in competitive AFRI awards at NIFA, and 2) evaluate which topics, if any, women and men vary in success. Methods: All proposals submitted to the AFRI program between 2013-2018 were evaluated and assigned to one of seven major priority areas: plant science, animal science, agroecology and the environment, education, food safety and nutrition, agricultural systems and technology, and rural economies. The proposals were then analyzed to assess if there were gender differences in success rate (proportion of proposals funded) and if those varied with agricultural topic area.
Results/Conclusions
Across 15,317 analyzed proposals, men submitted roughly twice the number of proposals, but overall were significantly less successful (proportion of proposals funded) at obtaining funding than women. Within topic area, education (including pre- and post-doctoral funding) was the only area where women submitted more proposals than men. This result is consistent with other studies finding women have higher representation or are at parity with men earlier in their careers. AFRI funding in the other 6 topic areas mostly represent research grants targeted at university faculty. Of this funding, men were not more successful than women in any topic area, but women were significantly more successful in plant sciences, agroecology and the environment, and agricultural systems and technology. Therefore, unlike other fields, women in agricultural research tend to outperform (higher success rates) men later in their careers.