Who Receives Nobel Prizes?
Nobel Laureates in STEM 1901-2021
25 out of 720 = 3.5%
4 out of 219 in Physics = 1.8%
7 out of 188 in Chemistry = 3.7%
12 out of 224 in Medicine = 5.4 %
2 out of 89 in Economics = 2.2%
History of Women Nobel Prize recipients in STEM:
Since 1901, 25 women have won the Nobel Prize in a STEM related field, out of 720 total Laureates:
Marie Curie was the first, in 1903, and a total of 4 women have been Nobel Laureates in Physics – out of 219 total (1.8% in Physics).
For Chemistry, there have been 7 female Nobel Laureates out of 188 total (3.7%), and this group includes Marie Curie again, winning in 1911, and her daughter, Irene Joliot-Curie, who shared the Prize in 1935 with her husband; incidentally making the Curies the most awarded Nobel family of all time.
Physiology and Medicine boasts 12 female Nobel Laureates out of 224 total (5.4%).
Economics awarded two, Elinor Ostrom and Esther Duflo, out of 89 total since 1969 (just 2.2%).
Six of the women earned their Nobel Laureate since 2018:
Donna Strickland in Physics (“method of generating high-intensity, ultra-short optical pulses”) 2018
Frances Arnold in Chemistry (“directed evolution of enzymes”) 2018 (source)
Esther Duflo in Economics (“experimental approach to alleviating global poverty”) 2019
Andrea M. Ghez in Physics (“discovery of a supermassive compact object at the centre of our galaxy”) 2019
Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna in Chemistry (“development of a method for genome editing) 2020. (source)
Who Receives STEM Prizes, Awards and Recognitions?
The BBC, in conjunction with The Conversation, addresses Why more women don’t win Nobel Prizes in science:
The paucity of women receiving other top awards in science, technology, medicine and economics is also well noted. For one example, consider two American awards in Economics -- The Clark Medal which has been awarded to four woman and 37 men since its founding, and the Elaine Bennett Research Prize, awarded every other year since 1998 by the American Economic Association “to a woman not more than seven years beyond her PhD” (source).
Despite dramatic increases in women earning PhDs in Physics and Chemistry, Economics and Medicine, this and other articles identify “glass cliffs” and “glass ceilings” that women in academia and research encounter. The article cites both explicit and implicit bias, culminating in what is generally known as the “Matilda Effect”:
… a gender gap in recognition, award winning and citations. Women’s research is less likely to be cited by others and their ideas are more likely to be attributed to men. Women’s solo-authored research takes twice as long to move through the review process. Women are underrepresented in journal editorships, as senior scholars and lead authors, and as peer reviewers.
Recognition is key to advancing into leadership – or power positions – in scientific research. The article notes that “Men cite their own papers 56% more than women do,” and continues:
When a woman becomes a world-class scientist, implicit bias works against the likelihood that she will be invited as a keynote or guest speaker to share her research findings, thus lowering her visibility in the field and the likelihood that she will be nominated for awards. This gender imbalance is notable in how infrequently women experts are quoted in news stories on most topics.
A follow up article in The Conversation (November 2018, by Leonora Risse) notes that Donna Strickland had to win the Nobel Prize to get promoted to a full professorship at the University of Waterloo. This doesn’t surprise Risse, who identifies what she terms the “gender qualification gap,” or the tendency for women to ‘over-invest’ in capabilities, skills and accomplishments in order to earn the next step up the ladder or the next recognition.
On July 1, 2019, the Director of the National Institutes of Health, Francis Collins, spoke to NPR about his pledge to no longer appear on panels/workshops/symposia that are solely male. Dr. Collins shares that these are often nicknamed “manels,” “man-ferences,” or “himposia,” and that the NIH is using data to “face up to this” and make substantive changes. All seven new advisory committee members (out of 20 total) are women, and the most recent six Institute Directors have included five women and one man[4]. Dr. Collins concludes that the NIH has a “wonderfully diverse” workforce and it’s “embarrassing” to be part of a male-only panel. He encourages other panelists to insist that their participation be on diverse panels.
The top, most prestigious award in Mathematics is the Fields Medal, awarded every four years to ground-breaking mathematicians under the age of 40. In total, 60 people have earned Fields Medals. Only one was a woman, Stanford professor Maryam Mirzakhani, who won in 2014 for her work in dynamics and geometry. Mirzakhani died just three later years, in 2017, of breast cancer.
What will it take to get women in the Power Percentage of receiving 50% of Awards, Prizes and Recognitions in Science and Technology?