Earlier this year UKRI published aggregated diversity data regarding grant applications and successes, with findings that women and ethnic minorities apply for and are awarded smaller amounts. More recently some finer grained data was released showing furthermore that the award rate for men and women diverges for larger grant values.
EPSRC are concerned by these findings and are investigating possible reasons for this; as such they have launched a survey for all researchers to share their reflections and experiences to help better understand the factors behind this gap. A link to the survey is here.
For a thoughtful discussion on the findings and possible actions that could be taken by universities and grant awarding bodies, the blog piece ‘Getting Behind Diversity Statistics’ by Athene Donald, master of Churchill College Cambridge provides some good pointers for reflection.