Male applicants are more likely to be awarded fellowships than female applicants: A case study of a Japanese national funding agency

Scientific grant applications are subjected to scholarly peer review. Studies show that the success rates of grant applications are often higher for male than for female applicants, suggesting that gender bias is common in peer review. However, these findings mostly come from studies in Europe, North America and Australia. Here we report the analyses of gender-specific success rates of applications to the fellowships offered by Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS). Because we analyze the observational data (i.e., not experimental), our aim here is to describe the possible gender gaps in the success rates, rather than the examination of gender bias per se. Results show that the success rates are consistently higher for male applicants than for female applicants among five different fellowship categories. The gender gaps in the success rates varied significantly between research fields in some Fellowship categories. Furthermore, in some fellowship categories, the gender gaps were significantly associated with the representation of female applicants (both positive and negative correlations were found). Though the causes of the gender gaps are unknown, unintentional gender bias during the review process is suggested. Pre-application gender gaps may also be contributing to the gender gaps in success rates. At least some of the observed gender gaps were relatively small, which may be partly explicable by the designs of the review process. However, gender gaps or biases acting prior to the application, such as self-selection bias, may have reduced the superficial gender gaps in the success rates. Further investigations that control for the effects of covariates (e.g., scientific merits of each applicant, which were not accessible to us) and those of other funding agencies, especially of non-Western countries, are warranted.