Giving Compass' Take:

• Holly Else reports that grant reviewers favor ‘broad’ words used more often by men, but proposals using those terms don’t produce better research.

• According to this article, The Gates Foundation says that it is committed to ensuring gender equality and that its grand-challenges program uses blind reviews in an attempt to eliminate reviewer bias.

• Learn about the reality of improving grant descriptions. 

Grant reviewers award lower scores to proposals from women than to those from men, even when they don’t know the gender of the applicant, an analysis of thousands of submissions to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has found1.

That’s because male and female scientists use different types of word on grant applications, according to the study, published by the US National Bureau of Economic Research.

The study finds that women are more likely to choose words specific to their field to describe their science, whereas men tend to use less precise terms. These broader terms seem to be preferred by the reviewers who decide how to distribute the cash, says the analysis — even though proposals containing those words don’t lead to better research outcomes.

The findings aren’t surprising, says Kuheli Dutt, who works in academic affairs and diversity at Columbia University in New York City. Dutt sees parallels with research showing that men are more likely to boast and overstate their performance in tests, whereas women are more likely to be cautious in their statements2. Using broad words might lead to sweeping claims, but narrow words might imply more cautious claims, she says.

Read the full article about grant language by Holly Else at Nature.