How to avoid and address a lack of gender diversity in grant proposals? I just got reviews back on a grant proposal.
On the whole the reviews were positive, but one reviewer criticised us because the five PIs are all male.
The proposed project arises naturally out of a couple of strands of work that we’ve been doing recently. The PIs are the people who’ve been involved in that work, plus the CTO of an industry partner. We’re in a niche area of applied math, and neither of the institutions involved have female staff eligible for the grant scheme working in the area of our proposal.
I support efforts to fix gender imbalances in academia, and I would have preferred a mixed-gender team. However, I’m not sure what I could have done for this project. The options seem to be:

Propose a fundamentally different piece of work with different participants. However, this would likely not be of interest to the industry partner, which is central to the viability of the proposal. Our original idea would then presumably not get developed.

Expand the proposal to bring in female colleague(s) at another institution. However, the funding scheme essentially only provides the salary for one postdoc, so the benefits for PIs at additional institutions are limited. The obvious candidates are all a long-haul flight away, so day-to-day engagement would be challenging. I’m uncomfortable asking people to do work on my proposal when I can’t offer them much in exchange.

Ask someone to put their name on the proposal “for show”. Clearly offensive and counterproductive.


Does anyone have any advice on how to best reconcile diversity considerations with practical realities in these circumstances?
My question is more about the general issue – and whether there is anything I should have done differently – than about how to respond to these particular reviews.
This is a hard and important problem.  There are a few things you can do to address it.
First, admit that there is a problem indicated by the demographics of your discipline.  Tell the funding agency that

neither of the institutions involved have female staff eligible for the grant scheme working in the area of our proposal.

Tell them briefly about your universities' plans for future diverse hiring.  Tell them that the grant applicants do not have control over the diversity of current staff (if this is true).
Explain how the project will contribute to gender inclusivity.  You said you plan to hire one postdoc.  How will you encourage gender minority scientists to apply for that postdoc?  How will your selection process prevent discrimination?  How will that postdoc receive professional development that will advance their career?
Will you be communicating about your project to the public, and will that be done in a way that reaches people of all genders?
It sounds like your project is applied.  Will the application benefit gender minorities?  Even if they get a minority of the benefit, it's still worth pointing out that your project does not exclusively benefit one gender.
Do not add a token applicant.  You are obligated to allocate the project funds efficiently.  Some people argue that tokenism has the opposite of the intended effect.