ABSTRACT
Throughout the world, women leave their academic careers to a far greater extent than their male colleagues.1 In Sweden, for example, women are awarded 44 per cent of biomedical PhDs but hold a mere 25 per cent of the postdoctoral positions and only 7 per cent of professorial positions. It used to be thought that once there were enough entry-level female scientists, the male domination of the upper echelons of academic research would automatically diminish. But this has not happened in the biomedical field, where disproportionate numbers of men still hold higher academic positions, despite the significant numbers of women who have entered this research field since the 1970s.
Why do women face these difficulties? One view is that women tend to be less motivated and career-oriented than men, and therefore are not as assiduous in applying for positions and grants. Another is that women are less productive than men, and consequently their work has less scientific merit. Yet another is that women suffer discrimination due to gender. We decided to investigate whether the peer-review system of the Swedish Medical Research Council (MRC), one of the main funding agencies for biomedical research in Sweden, evaluates women and men on an equal basis. Our investigation was prompted by the fact that the success rate of female scientists applying for postdoctoral fellowships at the MRC during the 1990s has been less than half that of male applicants.
