NIH Grant Cuts Disproportionately Harm Women, Early-Career Scientists
The National Institutes of Health grant terminations in 2025 disproportionately impacted women and early-career researchers, according to a study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The analysis revealed that women lost a larger percentage of their grant funding compared to men – 57.9% versus 48.2% – and that 60% of terminated grants held by doctoral students and assistant professors were led by women.
The findings add to a long-standing concern about inequities in biomedical research funding, often described as a “leaky pipeline” where researchers from marginalized communities are lost at each career stage. The study suggests that recent funding cuts may be exacerbating this problem.
“What we have is a great paper that confirms what I have been hearing in the community,” said Donna Ginther, an economist at the University of Kansas who studies NIH funding demographics, but was not involved in the new research. “Young and female investigators disproportionately lost NIH funding. It is disappointing to see that many of these grants were training grants that will have the impact of derailing scientific careers just as they are getting started.”
NIH officials defended the funding decisions, stating that the agency allocated its full budget in 2025 to scientists performing “high-impact science” and that the review process is “fair, and objective.” An NIH spokesperson also highlighted the “Unified Funding Strategy,” implemented in December, which aims to broaden geographic distribution of funding, consider career stage, and reduce reliance on traditional scoring cutoffs.
However, the study’s authors argue that structural features of the funding system contribute to these disparities. Diego F. M. Oliveira, a professor at the University of North Dakota and co-author of the paper, explained that women and early-career researchers were more likely to hold smaller grants and be in earlier stages of projects when funding was cut. “That combination matters because it means a larger portion of their planned research activity was interrupted,” he said.
Mytien Nguyen, an M.D.-Ph.D. Candidate at Yale University who studies inequities among “elite” investigators—those with multiple concurrent grants—added that women’s limited funding makes them more vulnerable to terminations. “The precarity of searching for funding and operating on smaller budgets could also mean that female principal investigators do not have as much license to pursue innovative ideas,” Nguyen said.
The impact extended beyond gender. The number of Black researchers receiving NIH “fellowship” grants dropped by 40% between 2024 and 2025, falling from 205 to 122 awards. Awards to white researchers also decreased, but by a smaller margin of 9%. This data was initially reported by the science blog DrugMonkey.
Ginther suggested that the topics studied by marginalized researchers may contribute to funding disparities, noting that research on population health—often favored by women and scientists of color—is less frequently funded than basic science. NIH research supports this claim, indicating that Black applicants tend to propose research on population health.
The administration also terminated 405 F31 awards, designed to fund doctoral students, many of which were designated as “diversity” awards. Jahn Jaramillo, a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Miami who had his own F31 grant terminated despite a perfect peer review score, described the situation as sending “mixed signals” to researchers from underrepresented groups. His grant, focused on HIV in the Latino immigrant community, aligned with the Trump administration’s stated goal of ending the HIV epidemic, yet was still cut.
Jaramillo expressed concern that his identity was being weaponized against him. “You’re getting mixed signals as to what you represent, and the kind of work that you should be doing,” he said. “When your grant is terminated halfway through the project, you’re disappointing [research participants], you’re confusing them. That has long-term impacts with regards to them trusting research.”