Gender imbalance in the productivity of funded projects: A study of the outputs of National Institutes of Health R01 grants

This study examines the relationship between team's gender composition and outputs of funded projects using a large data set of National Institutes of Health (NIH) R01 grants and their associated publications between 1990 and 2017. This study finds that while the women investigators' presence in NIH grants is generally low, higher women investigator presence is on average related to slightly lower number of publications. This study finds empirically that women investigators elect to work in fields in which fewer publications per million-dollar funding is the norm. For fields where women investigators are relatively well represented, they are as productive as men. The overall lower productivity of women investigators may be attributed to the low representation of women in high productivity fields dominated by men investigators. The findings shed light on possible reasons for gender disparity in grant productivity.