Gender Box-Ticking: How EU Climate Proposals Perform Sex and Gender Dimensions

When the European Union declared that integrating sex and gender dimensions into research and innovation would become a central policy priority, it fundamentally changed what scientists applying for funding had to write into their proposals. But what actually happens on the page when researchers respond to that requirement? A new study published in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications offers the most detailed answer yet, and the picture it paints is one of a funding system caught between genuine scientific engagement and bureaucratic box-ticking.

The study, conducted by Katrin Mögele and Ruth Müller of the Technical University of Munich and Clemens Striebing of the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering, examined 87 technology-oriented project proposals addressing the climate crisis, all submitted to the Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe funding programmes between 2014 and 2022. Crucially, the corpus included both funded and rejected proposals, giving the researchers a rare window into the full spectrum of how the research community responds to gender-related policy demands, not just the successful strategies.

Methodologically, the team took an inductive constructivist grounded theory approach, meaning they did not begin with a fixed checklist of what proper gender integration should look like. Instead, they allowed patterns to emerge from the proposals themselves, analysing how sex and gender dimensions were framed, negotiated, and operationalised in the text of real grant applications. This approach is particularly well suited to a question that is fundamentally about language and performance: how do scientists write about gender when they are under pressure to satisfy a funding criterion?

The findings reveal three main themes. The first is a strikingly wide spectrum of integration practices. At one end sit proposals that comprehensively incorporate sex and gender dimensions into their research design, treating them as substantive variables that shape the technology, the users, or the problem being addressed. At the other end, the researchers found procedural or symbolic inclusion, where gender appears in a proposal largely to satisfy formal requirements rather than to inform the science. Between these poles lies a continuum of practices, and the study suggests that where a proposal lands on that spectrum is far from random.

The second theme concerns terminology and conceptual clarity. The analysis found notable differences in how proposals used gender-related language, and in how clearly they defined the concepts they invoked. This matters because sex and gender are analytically distinct: sex typically refers to biological characteristics, while gender refers to socially constructed roles, behaviours, and identities. When proposals blur these categories or deploy the terms loosely, the resulting research designs risk being conceptually muddled, even when the intention to be inclusive is sincere. The study’s evidence of inconsistent conceptual clarity across 87 proposals suggests that many applicants are writing about gender without a shared vocabulary or stable definition of what the funder actually expects.

The third and perhaps most consequential theme is a tendency to conflate equal participation with the integration of sex and gender dimensions in research and innovation itself. In many proposals, addressing gender meant focusing on the representation of women, for example in consortium staffing or leadership roles, while overlooking the broader structural dimensions that gender analysis can bring to research content. This is an important distinction. Equal participation concerns who does the science; sex and gender dimensions concern what the science studies and how. A consortium can be perfectly gender-balanced and still produce climate technology that ignores gendered patterns of energy use, mobility, exposure to heat, or disaster vulnerability. The study’s finding that proposals often collapse these two concerns into one suggests that the policy instrument may be pulling attention toward workforce composition at the expense of research substance.

Running through all of this, the authors identify a central tension between formal compliance and substantive engagement. Applicants know that gender dimensions matter for evaluation, and they respond accordingly, but the depth of that response is shaped by disciplinary norms, institutional expectations, and the signals sent by funders. The original title of the paper quotes a narrative that captures one pole of this tension: the claim that technology and science are, by definition, non-discriminatory. Framed this way, gender becomes something external to the technology itself, a matter of who participates rather than what is designed. The study’s constructivist framing treats such statements as narratives that perform work within proposals, positioning gender integration as either irrelevant to technical excellence or as an add-on requirement to be managed.

The implications extend well beyond academic curiosity. Climate change is not gender-neutral. Differences in caregiving responsibilities, access to resources, occupational exposure, and decision-making power mean that climate technologies and policies can affect men and women differently, and that ignoring these dimensions can produce solutions that are less effective or even inequitable. If the flagship European funding programmes for climate research are producing proposals in which gender is treated symbolically, the scientific community may be missing systematic opportunities to improve both the quality and the justice of climate innovation. The grounded theory analysis suggests this is not a marginal problem but a patterned one, visible across a large sample of proposals from nearly a decade of submissions.

What can be done? The study points to several areas where further support may be beneficial. The authors highlight the need for enhanced training, so that researchers, particularly in technology-oriented and engineering fields where gender analysis has historically been less embedded, gain the conceptual tools to integrate sex and gender dimensions meaningfully. They also call for clearer guidance from funders, more transparent evaluation criteria, and greater institutional support, so that applicants are not left to guess what substantive engagement looks like or to fear that genuine integration will be read as a distraction from technical merit. Without such support, the gap between formal compliance and substantive engagement is likely to persist, because applicants respond rationally to the signals they receive.

For policymakers, funders, and researchers, the study provides a foundational understanding of how sex and gender dimensions are currently addressed in EU grant writing, and it does so with an unusually robust evidence base: 87 real proposals, funded and rejected, spanning eight years of the world’s largest research funding programme. Its message is ultimately constructive. The infrastructure for gender-responsive research exists, the policy mandate exists, and many applicants clearly want to engage with the requirement. What the analysis exposes is the translation problem in between, the point where policy language becomes proposal text. Closing that gap, the authors argue, will require the funding system itself to model the clarity and commitment it asks of its applicants, ensuring that gender integration in climate research becomes a scientific practice rather than a performance of compliance.

Subject of Research: Integration of sex and gender dimensions in European climate research funding proposals

Article Title: “Technology and science are, by definition, non-discriminatory”- narratives of the performance of sex and gender dimensions in European climate project proposals

Article References: “Technology and science are, by definition, non-discriminatory”- narratives of the performance of sex and gender dimensions in European climate project proposals. (n.d.). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41599-026-09092-w

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1038/s41599-026-09092-w

Keywords: sex and gender dimensions, Horizon 2020, Horizon Europe, climate research, research funding, grant proposals, gender integration, science policy, grounded theory, research and innovation, gender equality, European Union