Equality is a quality! The assessment of sex and gender perspectives as a quality indicator

In recent years, sex and gender perspectives (SGPs) have been included as criteria for scientific quality alongside broader impact (BI) in the peer review of funding applications at major research funding institutions. This represents an extension of policy ambitions to include gender equality in the content of research. Critics have argued that this undermines scientific autonomy. However, there has been little research on the importance that reviewers assign to SGP in practice. In this study, we use a combination of quantitative and qualitative text analysis of written opinions of 347 successful grant proposals at the Swedish funding agency Forte, cross-checked against qualitative interviews with reviewers. It is argued that reviewers rhetorically (re-)draw boundaries between what is to be considered scientific and non-scientific. They can thus both respect funders’ inclusion of SGP and BI and only allow these to influence assessment when they cohere with researchers’ notions of quality.