What is the issue?
- Only 6% of the total individuals who have won Nobel Prize up till 2016, are women.
- This calls for assessing the level of gender parity in Nobel prize wining.
How has the trend been?
- There have been 881 Nobel Prize winners from the time that the first one was given out in 1901.
- However, less than 50 of them have been women.
- Moreover, in some fields of expertise, the dry spell has been carrying on for decades.
- E.g. the last time a woman won a Nobel Prize for Physics was in 1964
- Two of the six laureates who were awarded prizes in Physics and Chemistry this year - Donna Strickland and Frances Arnold - are women.
- They are only the third and fifth women Nobel laureates in Physics and Chemistry, respectively, since Nobel prizes inception.
Does a gender bias exist?
- Despite the awareness about gender equality in the 21st century, the Nobel Prizes still show the disparity.
- The huge gender divide clearly indicates an institutional backlog in the consideration of Nobel-worthy discoveries.
- It is also to be noted that black and minority ethnic men are also underrepresented.
- The demographic of winners perpetuates a stereotype of old white men being the only achievers in science.
- The Nobel Museum curators found no proof as such of the committee refusing to give an award because of the gender of the nominee.
- Many women were nominated for their groundbreaking revelations a number of times, but have not won prize.
- These call for the community of scientists to introspect over what makes an enabling environment for women to practise science in.
Source: The Hindu, India Today
