[Womeninmedicine] Boston Globe comment on the JAMA article posted yesterday…

[Weisz, Ora Anna]

Boston Globe comment on the JAMA article posted yesterday…

Gender gap is wide in research funds, study shows
By Priyanka Dayal McCluskey
GLOBE STAFF SEPTEMBER 15, 2015

A stark gender gap persists at Boston’s big biomedical research institutions, where
young male scientists receive more than twice as much in funding to support their work
as female colleagues, according to a study.

The findings, published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association,
said male scientists beginning careers as faculty researchers received a median of
$889,000 in startup funding from their employers, while women received just
$350,000.

Startup money is critical for young scientists who are establishing labs, allowing them to
buy equipment and hire workers until they can apply for other grants from government
agencies and foundations.

“The difference was striking,” said Dr. Robert Sege, vice president of Health Resources
in Action, a Boston nonprofit, who led the study. “Men early in their careers get far
more funding from their research institutions than women.”

The results are especially concerning given Boston’s role as a global hub for biomedical
research and a major destination for scientists, Sege and other specialists said.
The gender gap, they added, also has implications for how women advance in careers in
science and medicine.

The gap is the worst at the largest hospitals and universities — those receiving more
than $120 million in federal research funding annually, according to the study.
The study examined more than 200 researchers at 55 hospitals, universities, and other
research institutions in New England from 2012 to 2014.

The study did not name any organizations. But according to the National Institutes of
Health, the Massachusetts institutions that receive the most federal research dollars are
Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical
School, Boston Children’s Hospital, and the University of Massachusetts Medical
School.

If women get less money than men initially, that makes it harder for women scientists
to publish findings from their research and attract grant money throughout their
working lives, said Nancy Hopkins, a retired professor at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology who has studied women in academia.

“These are the things that make your career hard or easy,” said Hopkins, who was not
involved in the JAMA study. “[Women] are going to have to work harder to make up for
that.”

The study helps answer why women do not advance in science at the same rate as male
colleagues, added Dr. Karen M. Freund, a professor at the Tufts University School of
Medicine. “This study provides one of the pieces of that puzzle.”

Susan A. Slaugenhaupt, scientific director of the Mass. General Research Institute, said
she was concerned by the findings and said Mass. General, which got more than $320
million in NIH funding this year, should examine how startup packages are awarded.
The packages are usually negotiated confidentially between researchers and department
heads, she noted.

“There isn’t any transparency there,” Slaugenhaupt said. “At the hospital, we need to
look at it closely.”

As in the broader workplace, part of the reason for the disparities might be that women,
unlike men, tend to accept compensation packages without negotiating, specialists said.
Mary Gehring, for example, fielded several offers before taking a job in 2010 as an
assistant professor of biology at MIT and a member of the Whitehead Institute, a
research institution in Cambridge. But Gehring, 39, didn’t negotiate startup funding for
her lab.

She said she feels fairly treated and well paid, but acknowledged, “I actually don’t know
if [I] had a good startup package. You don’t find out what other people get.”
Executives at research institutions say they have taken steps to promote the careers of
qualified women. Mass. General, for example, has a grant program designed specifically
for women in their “childrearing years.” UMass Medical School in Worcester is one of
several institutions that have hired more women to leadership positions; six
departments are chaired by women, up from just one department that was led by a
woman in 2007, said Dr. Terence R. Flotte, dean of the medical school.
“They’re still underrepresented,” he acknowledged, “but it’s progress.”

Dori Schafer, hired as an assistant professor of neurobiology at UMass Medical School
this year, said that thanks to strong woman mentors, she negotiated a startup package
of more than $1 million, money to hire staff for her lab and buy costly equipment,
including a $350,000 microscope.

“I’ve gotten the impression that women don’t stand up for themselves and negotiate and
say, ‘No, I need this,’ as much as they should,” said Schafer, 36. “It’s getting better, but I
think it’s part of the problem.”

Executives at research institutions said they welcomed the study’s findings but said
more research must be done to determine why the pay gap is occurring.

“The burden is on all of us to identify what is the cause of [the disparities] and what are
the strategies we have to deal with it,” said Dr. Anne Klibanski, chief academic officer at
Partners HealthCare, the parent company of Massachusetts General and Brigham and
Women’s hospitals.

Priyanka Dayal McCluskey can be reached at priyanka.mccluskey at globe.com<mailto:priyanka.mccluskey at globe.com>. Follow
her on Twitter @priyanka_dayal.

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