Women make up 30% of top researchers in Sweden. Thus, the fact that women receive less than 20% of funds for research at centres of excellence cannot be explained by a lack of top female researchers. It is more probable that notions of who are ‘excellent’ are coloured by gender prejudices. At the same time, half the recipients of excellence funding cannot be characterised as top researchers.

Centres of excellence: reward for gender or top-level research?

Expectations of brilliance underlie gender distributions across academic disciplines

Leslie et al, Science (2015) 347, 262-265

and comment by Andrew M Penner in same issue:

Gender inequality in science