Women are awarded more team than solo grants and lead more gender-balanced teams than men

We modelled patterns of collaboration, team gender composition, and funding amounts across awarded Australian government-funded competitive team research grants from 2000 to 2020. The percentage of grants awarded to women at mid- and senior-career levels was higher for team grants than sole investigator grants compared to men at those levels. Teams led by women tended to have a greater percentage of women coinvestigators than teams led by men, but this was below gender parity regardless of team leader gender. Funding amounts per grant did not differ by the principal investigator's gender and reached parity in 2020 across teams with both high and low representation of women. Since teams tend to be more gender-balanced when led by women, women's grant leadership may be an important mechanism for shifting overall representation of women in research. We offer public policy measures to address gender inequities in the research sector.