If your name is Rosalind and at any point you thought about winning a Nobel Prize, you’re screwed. Especially if what you aspired to was, in addition, a scientific or economic reward. The same thing happens if your name is Paloma, Elizabeth, María, Juana or, to be more precise, if you are generally a woman. This Wednesday we finished knowing the class of Nobel Prize winners in science and we cannot say that the distribution is surprising in terms of gender.
David Baker, Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper received the chemistry prize. The physics prize is awarded to John J. Hopfield and Geoffrey E. Hinton. And Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun won the Medicine prize. All men. A all-male panelas the English expression says which was invented some time ago with the sarcastic intention of emphasizing the hypermasculinization of spaces of opinion, meetings, recognitions, congresses and other important gatherings.
This is not new and it is not surprising because the 2024 laureates consolidate a trend in which women are celebrated and notable exceptions, especially if we refer to scientific awards, but also to the Nobel Prize in economy. Since their creation in 1901, 97% of Nobel Prizes in science have been awarded to men. Nor is it that the rest – Literature and Peace – can precisely boast of parity: in these, women represent 12% of the recognitions. Come on, there are more organizations (21%) than women who have received the Nobel Peace Prize. And look, the data is enough to burn containers.
This all-male panel adds more and more criticism, points of view capable of assuming a gendered reading of these very unbalanced figures. But it also brings the same comments as always, such as those who see potential injustice in our statement. “What is not possible is for the award to be given to someone solely because of their gender” or “it would be unfair to have to award him because he is a woman” and similar comments. And that is exactly what is happening: we are so used to it that we ignore the most obvious thing, namely that what is absolutely abnormal is that a prize – a space, a congress, a government, an executive – is occupied mainly by men.
In fact, what those who make this type of assessment assume is that, seriously, there is no worthy woman with the same merits to receive an award, speak at a meeting, publish a book, participate in this interesting round table, occupy this seat. or this post. It is only from the androcentric vision so internalized, from the wheel in which some shine and others clean as if it were the only possible way of organizing the world, that we can suppose that the Participation of 70, 80, 90 or 100% of men in any space or place is due to the lack of abilities or merits of women and not to the sexist dynamics and assumptions that sustain society.
By the way, one such notable exception occurred last year: Claudia Goldin was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for her pioneering contributions to conceptualizing and explaining gender gaps in the economics market. work. “Their studies reveal the causes of the gender gap. “Women are significantly underrepresented in the global labor market and, when they work, they earn less than men,” the Swedish Academy of Sciences said in explaining the award. Of course, if they read it, they didn’t really feel challenged.
Rosalind, the invisibles and teamwork
However, the choice of Rosalind to begin this article is logical. This Monday, after revealing who the winners of the Nobel Prize in Medicine were, the Swedish Academy’s social network X account published a photo of one of the winners, Victor Ambros, with a woman and declared: “This morning, he celebrated the news of his award alongside his colleague and wife Rosalind Lee, who was also the first author of the paper cell 1993 cited by the Nobel committee. In other words, the researcher is also the author of the article that the jury cites as the reason for choosing Ambros, but she is not rewarded.
The agitation is great, as my colleague Antonio Martínez Ron says. Several experts question the Academy’s decision and the “oblivion” that left Lee out. “The academy should justify why this lady is not rewarded because it seems that she contributed significantly to the discoveries,” believes César Tomé, coordinator of the UPV/EHU Scientific Culture Notebook. The mathematician and editor of digital space Women and scienceMarta Macho, believes that it is possible that it was not the Nobel committee which left Rosalind Lee aside, but rather the people or entities who proposed Ambros’ candidacy.
Regardless, the absence of the researcher cited by the Academy itself is very striking. Especially since the couple’s discoveries have already received other awards jointly.
Their “absence” is no exception either: in different disciplines, the contributions and work of women have systematically fallen into oblivion, invisibility and the margins. Just look not at the awards, but at the manuals. And one example features another Rosalind, Rosalind Franklin. James Watson and Francis Crick also received a Nobel Prize for the discovery of the structure of DNA, for which Franklin’s contribution was fundamental. It was also priceless. Not even fair recognition.
Engineer Lorena Fernández Ávarez commented on another important issue in X: teamwork versus individual figure. “In the wake of the recent (and still ongoing) controversies surrounding the #Nobel Prize, in addition to eradicating machismo from the Academy, we should perhaps reconsider the practice of awarding individual prizes, when science is a collective effort,” he said. There is an urgent need to rethink the concept of certain prizes, which tend to reward specific individuals in areas where teamwork and group contributions are normally essential to achieving discovery.
The individual price dynamic reinforces the idea that some brilliant people – men – make great contributions on their own and renders invisible many others who, perhaps because of their researcher status, their hierarchy or because that their work is less appreciated or less visible, do not receive an award. acknowledgement. .
For now, one thing is clear: in the Nobel Prize of confinement, women are the queens.
