Since the Nobel Prizes were established in 1901, only 24 women have won prizes in science. This year, that number remained the same: All seven prize winners in physics, chemistry, and physiology or medicine were men.
Some scientists have expressed dismay at the lack of women among this year’s awardees, particularly the absence of two women who contributed to the work being honored for the prize in physiology or medicine. Experts who study bias in science say the Nobel gender gap reflects greater barriers to success that women face in science – and that science is poorer.
The men who received this year’s prizes are “superstars,” said Liselotte Jauffred, a physicist at the Niels Bohr Institute who has studied gender bias in Nobels. But “what are the methods that make it easier for men to join that group of star scientists who may be chosen to win the Nobel Prize?”
Some fields, such as biology, chemistry and the social sciences achieve parity in both undergraduate and graduate degrees. But representation falls high on the education ladder – a problem known as a leaky pipeline. Some women are pushed out of science altogether because of sexual experiences. Those who persist are often not promoted to full professorships, and fewer become doctors, heads of departments or editors of journals.
Even once they are in school, women are not given the time to hire as often as men. They are listed as an important author in more papers, are cited less often than their male colleagues, and receive fewer prestigious awards overall.
Determining whether Nobel laureates are more biased than academics in general “wasn’t easy,” Jauffred said. Researchers had to account for the time between discovery and acceptance, and for the low representation of women in science over the years. But even if he accounted for these factors, he and his colleagues found in a 2019 study that the likelihood that bias against women played a role in deciding who gets the awards was about some 96%.
This year’s Nobel for physiology or medicine, which was awarded to Gary Ruvkun and Victor Ambros for the discovery of microRNA, has attracted special scrutiny regarding gender bias. Many outside observers commented on the fact that Rosalind Lee, Ambros’ wife and longtime collaborator, was not credited for the discovery despite being the first author of one of the studies. mentioned by the committee. For some, the story seemed to write itself – another Rosalind overlooked by the committee, like Rosalind Franklin, whose contributions to the discovery of DNA’s double helix were not recognized at first.
However, there are reasons beyond sexism that can cause colleagues like Lee to be overlooked. The Nobel committee limits the prizes to three people, which some scientists have pointed out is an old way of rewarding incremental discoveries as part of larger collaborations.
Bruce Wightman, a biologist at Muhlenberg College who was in Ruvkun’s lab and worked on part of the microRNA discovery, said: “Any project of this complexity takes years. and many donors.” “Science takes a city.”
UMass School of Medicine spokeswoman Chan said Lee and Ambros “celebrate the Nobel Prize and consider it a recognition of the team’s collaborative work.”
Aim to reduce gender bias in Nobel Prizes
That said, how credit is allocated to scientists who are part of a larger collaboration may be a product of bias. One study found that women who wrote papers were less likely to get time compared to those who only published papers. This type of cooperation did not have any effect on men’s ability to find work. One found that women tended to receive authorship of papers or patents they contributed to more often than their male colleagues.
The Nobels tend to “recognize people who were in a position of power and authority, rather than people who actually discover or have a theory or prove it through experiments,” said Pnina Abir- Am, historian of science at Brandeis University. who studied partnered couples in science as well as reported women who were not accepted for the Nobel Prize for RNA splicing.
The Nobel committee is often “slightly selective” in who it awards, Abir-Am said, preferring those who are the heads of the lab where the research was conducted as well as those who have trained with other Nobel laureates. That means fewer earning opportunities for women, ethnic minorities, and younger scientists who have achieved success but are less likely to hold positions of power.
Nobel laureates also tend to come from upper-class families, according to Paul Novosad, an economist at Dartmouth College who studies access to opportunity and upward mobility. Novosad and his colleagues published a white paper this week finding that, on average, winners come from families with fathers making 87 percent of their country’s income. Almost half were above 5% in income.
Female winners tended to come from upper-class families, which the authors write may be because higher economic status helps them overcome some gender barriers to education. But it “means that women in high-ranking academics are excluded from an even smaller socioeconomic advantage than men, implying maldistribution,” they write in the paper.
“If smart but poor kids fail to get into science, then everyone loses out on discoveries,” Novosad said.
Things may change. The survey found that the average socioeconomic status of the winners is declining, which may indicate a slow democratization of science. “This type of research is very important for the same reasons that we would like to see the population of low-income people standing in different high-income countries,” said Novosad. “Unfortunately there is still an incredible amount of work to be done just to convince men at the highest levels of science that these obstacles exist at all.”
Another change that may make acknowledgments more appropriate going forward is the growing practice of papers describing what each author contributed to the paper. “Journals require scientists to say who contributed to the conception and who participated in the experiments,” Abir-Am said. This creates less confusion about who directly contributed to the award-winning discoveries – rather than assuming that lab heads or senior authors did the lion’s share of the work. “I don’t care who is the captain and who is the junior [researcher]I want to know who did it.”
The bodies that nominate Nobel laureates have taken steps to address the lack of diversity laureates in recent years. In 2019, Nobel committees began asking nominees to consider gender and race to promote a more diverse selection of nominees. And since scientists must be invited to participate in elections, “[w]invites an increasing number of people from areas beyond the traditional research areas of the United States, Europe, Australia and Japan,” Thomas Perlmann, secretary of the Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine, said told Nature this week. “In addition, we are identifying more women and younger scientists as candidates.”
Jauffred also saw improvement. She was inspired to write her paper on gender bias in Nobels after Donna Strickland in 2018 became the first woman to win the Nobel in physics in 55 years. As of 2018, two other women have also they won the Nobel in physics. However, progress is slow.
“The number of people in the field has been changing for a long time, but it has not been reflected in the Nobel Prizes,” said Jauffred. “When we do not see the difference in the Nobel Prizes, it is clear that we ask ourselves questions. Why should it be so?”
Megan Molteni contributed reporting.
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