For 17 years, research proposals from male scientists were more successful than those from their female peers

Hundreds of astronomers compete each year to use the Hubble Space Telescope, an observatory capable of gazing into some of the most remote reaches of our universe.

For 17 years, research proposals from male scientists were more successful than those from their female peers. Now the application process has been made anonymous and women are outperforming men.

Starting in early 2017, Stefanie Johnson, a University of Colorado academic, sat in on the panel that allocates Hubble’s time. She found well-established white men from prestigious universities were getting “an extra bump” to win access to the $3 billion telescope. “In many cases at least one person in the room would know who the applicant was,” she said. Now research proposals are scrubbed of information that might