Why Do Fewer Women Win Nobel Prizes in Science? | The Palki Sharma Show | IGR | India Global Review

Women’s Underrepresentation Among Nobel Laureates

Since the Nobel Prizes began in 1901, 67 women have won, accounting for about 7% of laureates. Marie Curie is the only woman to have won twice. The gap is particularly stark in science: the programme cites five women laureates in physics, eight in chemistry, and 14 in physiology or medicine.

The presenter argues that this disparity does not reflect women’s ability. Rather, it stems from centuries of unequal access to education, laboratory work, research jobs, funding, and influence. Women currently make up about 35% of STEM graduates worldwide, so fewer women enter the fields from which many science laureates are drawn.

The “Matilda Effect”

Science historian Margaret Rossiter coined the term “Matilda effect” to describe the tendency to overlook women’s scientific contributions or credit them to men. The programme gives several examples:

• Lise Meitner helped explain nuclear fission, but Otto Hahn received the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
• Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered pulsar signals, while her supervisor, Anthony Hewish, and Martin Ryle received the 1974 Nobel Prize in Physics.
• Chien-Shiung Wu conducted the experiment underpinning the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physics, which was awarded to male colleagues.
• Rosalind Franklin’s X-ray diffraction work contributed to the understanding of DNA’s structure but was not properly recognized during her lifetime.
• Marie Curie was initially left off the nomination for her first Nobel Prize until Pierre Curie intervened.

The programme cautions that not every woman who missed out on a Nobel Prize was necessarily unfairly denied one. However, it argues that the repeated pattern is difficult to dismiss. Unequal recognition compounds barriers to funding, career advancement, and opportunity.

Presenter: Palki Sharma