Gender equality contributes to diversity, excellence and quality in research outcomes and makes research more relevant and responsive to social and societal challenges. The HRB has a longstanding commitment to mainstream gender equality for those seeking to access our research funding, to integrate gender considerations in our decision-making processes and practices, and to require consideration of gender issues by grant applicants in the design of research projects.
The HRB developed its first Gender Policy in respect of research funding in 2016.
In line with the policy we:
- introduced a requirement for Athena SWAN accreditation for Higher Education Institutions to become and/or retain their status as a HRB Host Institution.
- began publishing headline gender-disaggregated statistics on the website from 2016.
- introduced sex/gender considerations as an explicit factor in the assessment of grant applications from 2016.
- participated in the 2021 global review of Sex, Gender, and Diversity Analysis in Research Policies of Major Public Granting Agencies to assist us in benchmarking the HRB’s policies and measures with funding agencies globally.
In 2022, the European Commission introduced Gender Equality Plans (GEPs) as a new eligibility criterion for public bodies, research organisations and education institutions when applying to the Horizon European Funding Programme for Research and Innovation (2022-2027). We were pleased to develop and publish the HRB’s Gender Equality Plan (2022-2024) as it allowed us to highlight our work and commitment to gender equality in our role as a funder of research but also more broadly as a public sector organisation. The current version of our Gender Equality Plan is available here.
To ensure that this is not just a plan on a shelf, GEP actions are integrated into the core business planning, resourcing (both human capital and financial) and reporting processes in the HRB, with key actions explicitly incorporated into staff workplans. We monitor and debate progress and we provide a summary report to the Executive Team on an annual basis.
Here are our annual disaggregated statistics for grant applicants and for panel members. Following review by the HRB Executive Team these figures are updated each year for the preceding year.