Funded PhD for Women in STEM (2026)

Most "scholarships for women in STEM" lists mix together programs at completely different career stages, undergraduate awards, postdoctoral fellowships, and PhD-specific funding, without saying clearly which is which. That's the main way these lists waste an applicant's time: you spend an evening reading about the L'Oreal-UNESCO For Women in Science awards before realizing they're for postdocs, not doctoral students. Below are the programs that specifically and currently fund PhD-level study, with real award amounts and eligibility details, and a clear note on which career stage each one is actually built for.

Amelia Earhart Fellowship (Zonta International): $10,000, open worldwide

The Amelia Earhart Fellowship is one of the longest-running dedicated funding programs for women in a STEM subfield: aerospace engineering and space sciences specifically. It awards $10,000 annually to up to 30 women worldwide pursuing a PhD or doctoral degree in the field, usable for tuition, books and fees, or living expenses. It's open to women of any nationality with a superior academic record, and it isn't a small or occasional program: since its founding in 1938, Zonta has awarded more than $12.2 million total to over 1,300 women from more than 80 countries. It's a supplement to your primary funding rather than full doctoral support on its own, apply early, deadlines typically fall in mid-November for the following year's award.

Schlumberger Foundation Faculty for the Future: up to $50,000 a year

This is the largest award on this list by dollar amount, up to $50,000 per year, renewable through completion of the PhD, and it's built specifically for women from science and technology lagging countries who plan to return to an academic career in their home region after finishing. The grant is based on actual costs and typically covers tuition and bench fees, accommodation, a living allowance, medical insurance, and in some cases childcare and initial travel to the host country. The eligibility criteria here are more specific than a general "women in STEM" award, you need to be from one of the foundation's defined eligible countries and demonstrate a genuine intent to return and contribute to your home region's STEM capacity, so read the current eligibility list closely before assuming you qualify.

Society of Women Engineers (SWE) scholarships

SWE runs multiple scholarship programs for women in engineering, engineering technology, and computer science at the graduate level, including PhD students, at institutions with ABET-accredited programs. Award amounts and specific eligibility vary by named scholarship within SWE's portfolio, check SWE's current scholarship list directly for the specific awards open to doctoral applicants in a given year rather than assuming a single fixed amount applies across all of them.

Microsoft Research Women's Fellowship

Aimed specifically at women pursuing a PhD in computer science, electrical engineering, or mathematics at a defined list of partner universities, this fellowship is narrower in scope than the others here, both by field and by eligible institution, but genuinely relevant if your target program and field match. Check Microsoft Research's current fellowship page for the active list of eligible universities before applying, since it's tied to specific partner schools rather than open globally.

Bell Burnell Graduate Scholarship Fund

Named for physicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell, this fund supports women and other underrepresented groups pursuing a doctorate in physics, and is open to full or part-time graduate study. It's administered through the Institute of Physics, worth checking directly for current eligibility, since it's specific to physics rather than STEM broadly.

ACM-W conference and research scholarships (computing specifically)

For women specifically in computer science and related fields, ACM-W, the Association for Computing Machinery's council on women in computing, runs a standing scholarship program for conference attendance: up to $600 for intra-continental travel and up to $1,200 for intercontinental travel to attend a computer science research conference, applications are reviewed six times a year, in mid-February, April, June, August, October, and December. You don't need to be presenting a paper to qualify. It's a smaller, narrower award than the fellowships above, worth stacking alongside your primary funding specifically to cover the conference travel costs a standard stipend often doesn't stretch to.

The gender gap by field is real, and it's why field-specific funding exists at all

Across all fields combined, the gap has been closing for years, the National Science Foundation's Survey of Earned Doctorates found that among U.S. citizens and permanent residents earning doctorates, the share who were women rose from 51% in 2004 to 54% in 2024, while the share who were men fell from 49% to 46% over the same period. That overall figure masks real variation by field, though, doctorates in fields like engineering and computer science remain more male-skewed than the overall average, which is precisely why dedicated funding programs in those specific fields, Amelia Earhart for aerospace, Microsoft Research and ACM-W for computing, SWE for engineering broadly, exist as a deliberate, targeted response rather than a generic diversity gesture. If your field is one with a persistent gap, that's exactly where a targeted fellowship is most likely to exist and to matter for your specific application.

Graduate Women in Science (GWIS) National Fellowship Program

GWIS, an organization that has supported women in science since 1921, runs an annual National Fellowship Program open to women conducting hypothesis-driven research in STEM, life science, or related social science fields at institutions in the US or abroad. Awards of up to $10,000 cover a specific project lasting up to 12 months, funding supplies, small equipment, publication costs, or travel for field or collaborative research, funds can't be used for salaries. In the 2025 to 2026 cycle, GWIS distributed $75,000 across ten research awards plus recognition for nineteen additional graduate students, and the program has awarded nearly $750,000 total since 2008. Applications open in late October with a deadline in early January, worth building into your funding search timeline a full year ahead if this cycle's deadline has passed.

Programs to know about, but not for PhD funding directly

A few names that show up constantly in "women in STEM funding" searches are worth understanding clearly rather than chasing incorrectly. The L'Oreal-UNESCO For Women in Science international awards, and the related L'Oreal USA For Women in Science fellowship, fund postdoctoral researchers, women who already hold a PhD, not current doctoral students. They're genuinely worth knowing about as a step after you finish your degree, but including them on a list of PhD funding sources, as many generic scholarship round-ups do, sets up applicants for a wasted application.

Evaluating a lab's actual environment, not just its funding

A fellowship or scholarship solves the funding question, it doesn't tell you anything about whether a specific lab is a genuinely supportive place to spend several years, and that's worth researching directly rather than assuming. Looking at a lab's current roster for other women at the graduate or postdoctoral level is a reasonable starting signal, though not a complete one on its own. More informative is reaching out directly to a current or recent woman in the lab, where you can find one, and asking honestly about mentorship, how authorship and credit get decided, and how the supervisor has handled things like parental leave or scheduling flexibility in the past. These are ordinary due-diligence questions, not confrontational ones, and a supervisor's reaction to a thoughtful version of this question is itself useful information.

Why stacking still requires real supervisor fit

Every fellowship above is designed to supplement or partially cover a PhD, not to replace the work of finding a specific supervisor whose lab actually fits your research interests and who has room to take you on. A funding committee reviewing an application for something like the Schlumberger fellowship or a SWE scholarship is generally more confident in an applicant who already has a concrete, specific supervisor and research plan lined up than one applying with funding secured but no clear academic home yet. Our guide to finding professors in engineering accepting international students and our guide to finding PhD supervisors in biotechnology cover how to identify and approach the right lab in two STEM fields where several of these fellowships specifically apply.

GradScoutFunding searches professors by field and country, confirms they're actively publishing, and drafts a personalized first email grounded in their real recent paper for you to review and send yourself, the same process regardless of which fellowship you're layering on top of your university funding. It's never a guarantee that a professor has funding available, no tool can verify that in advance. The free tier gives 2 credits with no card required, and paid credit packs are one-time purchases that never expire.

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