©
Medical Sciences Division and John Cairns
The paper, published in the BMJ, said that more funders should trial funding incentives as they have been shown to work. The research team was led by Pavel Ovseiko, Senior Research Fellow in the Radcliffe Department of Medicine.
To accelerate women’s advancement and leadership, the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) in 2011 linked its research funding to the implementation by universities of gender equality action plans through the Athena SWAN (Scientific Women’s Academic Network) charter.
In the 2016 round of the competition, the NIHR said it would not shortlist any research centre where the academic partners had not achieved at least the Athena SWAN silver award.
After the introduction of the Athena SWAN incentives, the proportion of female theme leads in BRCs increased from 8%in both 2006 and 2011 to 24% in 2016. The proportion of women in senior director positions also increased, albeit more modestly, from 11% in 2006 and 10% in 2011 to 15% in 2016.
The full story is available on the NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research Centre website