Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Women tend to be under-represented in STEM fields. We look specifically at STEM research fields to examine federal funding to female researchers in STEM and develop a set of further actions federal agencies can take to increase women’s participation in STEM.  We analyze administrative data from the six largest federal STEM funding agencies to determine the differences, if any, in federal grants to male and female researchers.  In order to explore the factors that might explain the differences we find, we use the Survey of Doctoral Recipients to construct a logit model of receiving federal agency funding as a function of researchers’ demographic, educational, career, and social characteristics.  In order to determine what actions federal agencies could take to increase women’s participation in STEM research, we compile possible actions from a literature review, interviews with leading federal agencies, and input from experts. We compare these possible actions to the actions the six agencies are currently taking and those that agencies consider feasible to take in the future.