Why don't more women win Nobel Prizes in the sciences?

Oct 9, 2018

Rainer Weiss, laureate in physics, Barry C. Barish, laureate in physics, Kip S. Thorne, laureate in physics, Jacques Dubochet, laureate in chemistry, Joachim Frank, laureate in chemistry, Richard Henderson, laureate in chemistry, Jeffrey Hall, laureate in physiology or medicine, Michael Rosbash, laureate in physiology or medicine, Michael Young, laureate in physiology or medicine, Kazuo Ishiguro, laureate in literature, and Richard Thaler, laureate in economics are seen during the Nobel Award Ceremony at the Concert House in Stockholm, Sweden December 10, 2017. TT News Agency/Henrik Montgomery via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS - THIS IMAGE WAS PROVIDED BY A THIRD PARTY. SWEDEN OUT. NO COMMERCIAL OR EDITORIAL SALES IN SWEDEN - RC1B0BE56540

A female science Nobel candidate is a rarity. Image: REUTERS

Mary K. Feeney

Associate Professor and Lincoln Professor of Ethics in Public Affairs and Associate Director of the Center for Science, Technology and Environmental Policy Studies, Arizona State University

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Women with college degrees remain underrepresented in science and engineering occupations in the United States, although less so than in the past. Except in computer/mathematical sciences, women have increased their proportion in each broad occupational group since the early 1990s.

People haven’t done a good job updating their mental images of what a scientist looks like since Wilhelm Roentgen won the first physics Nobel in 1901

Image: .Wellcome Collection, CC BY

Image: Statista

Donna Strickland outside her lab at the University of Waterloo.Female physics laureate No. 3

Image: Reuters/Peter Power

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