Are female-dominated cancers underfunded?

Cancer is the second leading cause of death worldwide, which accounts for one in sixth deaths. Given this substantial burden, funding agencies have invested heavily in cancer research over recent decades. However, the allocation of research funding does not always align with the burden of different cancers. This paper investigates the underfunding of research on female-dominated cancers in Europe and explores the mechanisms underlying the unequal distribution of research grants. Using a novel hand-collected dataset of 1078 projects funded by the European Commission between 2007 and 2023, we show that male-dominated cancers receive 3.7% more funding than female-dominated cancers, conditional on disease burden. This difference is driven by the over-representation of male researchers in cancer research and the higher proportion of male members on evaluation panels, which favors funding for male-dominated cancer projects. We find no evidence that the funding gap is explained by penalties against female researchers, gender differences in research outputs, or disease burden. These findings contribute to our understanding of how research funding is allocated across diseases and its implications for health equity. Achieving more equitable funding in cancer research requires targeted strategies, including incentivizing research on female-dominated cancers, supporting female researchers, and increasing gender diversity in evaluation panels.