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  • OPEN ACCESS
    Gender and language use in scientific grant writing
    FACETS • Vol. 4 • No. 1 • pp. 442 - 458
    Women in science, technology, engineering, and math are not equally represented across tenure-track career stages, and this extends to grant funding, where women applicants often have lower success rates compared with men. While gender bias in reviewers has been documented, it is currently unknown whether written language in grant applications varies predictably with gender to elicit bias against women. Here we analyse the text of ∼2000 public research summaries from the 2016 Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) individual Discovery Grant (DG) program. We explore the relationship between language variables, inferred gender and career stage, and funding levels. We also analyse aggregated data from the 2012–2018 NSERC DG competitions to determine whether gender impacted the probability of receiving a grant for early-career researchers. We document a marginally significant gender difference in funding levels for successful grants, with women receiving $1756 less than men, and a large and significant difference in rejection rates among early-career applicants (women: 40.4% rejection; men: 33.0% rejection rate). Language variables had little ability to predict gender or funding level using predictive modelling. Our results indicate that NSERC funding levels and success rates differ between men and women, but we find no evidence that gendered language use affected funding outcomes.
  • OPEN ACCESS
    Assessing gage: an online tool for improving gender visibility in STEMM
    FACETS • Vol. 6 • pp. 1601 - 1609
    Women continue to be underrepresented and less visible in the fields of science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine (STEMM). 500 Women Scientists created and launched in January 2018 a global (>140 countries to date), online, open-access directory of women in STEMM fields. This directory—recently renamed gage—now also includes gender diverse persons (i.e., additional underrepresented genders) in STEMM fields. The purpose of the directory is to make these scientists’ expertise easier to locate and access for conference organizers, journalists, policy makers, educators, and others. Here, we undertake an assessment of the directory using surveys, Google Analytics, and focus groups to understand its efficacy and direction to date and identify future improvements we pledge to undertake. Through this assessment—conducted externally and in accordance with privacy protocols by Concolor Research—we identified who and how people are using our directory, why people signed up to be a resource, and areas for improvement. Through such assessment, we can learn how to enhance the directory’s efficacy and our broader efforts to boost the visibility of underrepresented people in STEMM.
  • OPEN ACCESS
    Using community science to advance grizzly bear conservation
    FACETS • Vol. 9 • pp. 1 - 11
    Alberta grizzly bears are classified as a threatened species in the province of Alberta as of 2010, with human-caused mortality and habitat loss a primary threat. The people who live, work, and recreate within bear habitat play a crucial role in their conservation. While the public is often enthusiastic about grizzly bears, and opportunistically report their observations to government staff, these reports are not systematic or rigorously collected and lack key information. As such, we developed GrizzTracker as a community science program. Following several years of successful deployment, we analyzed community scientist data and evaluated the efficacy of the program through an online user survey. We found that the GrizzTracker app was useful as a data collection and public engagement tool, yielding information for applied management, and that community scientists were generally satisfied. We provide considerations for future program development, including considerations for human, social, technological, and financial capital investment related to design, development, and implementation of data collection protocols, the importance of clearly communicating outcomes, and opportunities for educational outreach. While there is continued trepidation by traditionally trained scientists to develop or engage in community science programs, and some noted areas of improvement for our program specifically, we think that GrizzTracker offers a success story in community science.