The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Advisory Committee to the Director’s (ACD) Working Group on Women in Biomedical Careers (2007) considered gender disparities in the biomedical research workforce in response to the National Academies report “Beyond Bias and Barriers: Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering.” The NIH ACD’s Working Group on Diversity in the Biomedical Research Workforce (2012) identified concerns with differences in the proportion of individuals receiving R01 grants by race and ethnicity compared to the total U.S. population. Both these reports identified that the proportion of women and underrepresented populations in biomedical research was not equal to their proportion in the total population.

            This paper acknowledges that there are many steps to becoming a biomedical researcher. We argue that in order to fully understand gender and racial differences in the biomedical research workforce, we must understand the decomposition of gender and race at diverse points along the pathway to becoming a biomedical researcher. Of most relevance is understanding at what point women and underrepresented minorities fall out of the pipeline. We use data from the American Community Survey (ACS), the Scientists and Engineers Statistical Data System (SESTAT) and the Survey of Earned Doctorates (SED) from the National Science Foundation, and internal NIH administrative data for our analysis. We compare gender, race, and ethnicity proportions in the total population to those with a high school degree, those with an undergraduate degree, those with a Ph.D., and those who are principal investigators receiving NIH funding.

Our goal is to provide a more complete picture of the pathway to becoming a biomedical researcher. We do not expect the proportion of individuals engaged in biomedical research or receiving NIH funding as a principal investigator to be equal to the proportion of women and underrepresented minorities in the total U.S. population. Prior studies have identified disparities at various points along the pathway prior to receiving an advanced degree and becoming an established researcher with external funding. Additionally, Myers and Turner (2004) use representation ratios to compare individuals aged 24 to 70 years old with a Master’s degree or higher to individuals not enrolled in school whose occupation is identified as a postsecondary teacher working at a college or university and find that while the proportion of underrepresented minorities in faculty positions improved nationally between 1990 and 2000, they were still underrepresented in 2000.

We attempt a similar analysis comparing representation ratios at various stages in the academic pathway to becoming a biomedical researcher and principal investigators with NIH funding. Our hope is to provide a more accurate and complete picture of disparities along the pathway to becoming a biomedical research and identify the stages at which individuals are more likely to fall out of the pathway.