Urgent government funding is needed for effective, diverse and equitable medical research

Figure 1 from the article showing gendered trends in application and funding rates

Dr Jess Borger recently co-authored an article on the loss of women from the medical research sector, published in Women's Agenda. She, Dr Kate Lawlor and Dr Kylie Quinn discuss how the government needs to inject funding into research or we will lose Early-Mid Career Researchers (EMCRs), especially women, from the system. They canvass the following topics:

• Government support of research has been waning
• The impact of COVID-19 on research is inequitably distributed
• Australia lags behind the global response
• Women and EMCRs receive less funding support
• How do we mitigate a loss of women from research?

Dr Jessica Borger is an immunologist at Monash University with diverse research interests in both cancer immunotherapy and chronic lung disease. She is also a passionate science communicator and advocate for gender equality in STEM.

Dr Kate Lawlor is an immunologist at the Hudson Institute of Medical Research, Monash University, whose research focuses on how cell death contributes to inflammatory and infectious disease. She is co-chair of the Equity and Diversity Committee at Hudson Institute and an advocate for gender equality in STEM.

Dr Kylie Quinn is an immunologist at RMIT University, whose research focuses on the impact of ageing on immune-based therapies such as vaccines and chimeric antigen receptor T cell therapy. She is a keen science communicator and current Women’s Initiative Coordinator for the Australia and New Zealand Society of Immunology.