Women Who Win Science Prizes Earn Less Money, Prestige than Men

Biomedical awards from the past 50 years reveal a gender imbalance, but it appears to be improving.

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ABOVE: Since 1901, there have been 599 Nobel Prizes awarded for scientific research: 18 have gone to women, and of those, 12 have been in physiology or medicine.
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Even when it comes to prize money in science, women take home less cash and less respect than men, according to an analysis published as a Nature Commentary on Wednesday (January 16).

Not many studies have looked at the influence of winning a major prize or two on a scientist’s career, but evidence does suggest that receiving such awards can “catch the eye” of granting agencies and influence the direction of a researcher’s work, according to the commentary. To see if there were any gender disparities in the effects of prize winning, Brian Uzzi and Teresa Woodruff of Northwestern University and their colleagues reviewed award winners in biomedicine from 1968 to 2017. Using Wikipedia and Wikidata to collect information, the ...

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Meet the Author

Ashley Yeager
Ashley started at The Scientist in 2018. Before joining the staff, she worked as a freelance editor and writer, a writer at the Simons Foundation, and a web producer at Science News, among other positions. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and a master’s degree in science writing from MIT. Ashley edits the Scientist to Watch and Profile sections of the magazine and writes news, features, and other stories for both online and print.
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