Research: Women Are Winning More Scientific Prizes, But Men Still Win the Most Prestigious Ones
Do women receive the same recognition in science as men? Do they have access to the same incentives? A new study found that while women are indeed winning more prizes, they still lag significantly on prize quality: they win fewer prestigious prizes and less money than men, despite comparable quality of work. Researchers documented biomedical research prizes over the past five decades (1968-2017), from the big ones like the Nobel and the Breakthrough Prize to much smaller, lesser-known awards—628 prizes in all. They also considered the financial awards and prestige associated with the prizes, as indicators of their quality. Then they measured the percentage of prizes won by women and the association between gender and prize quality. Their initial results highlighted overall good news: the proportion of biomedical prizes awarded to women has risen steadily. But when they looked at the association between gender and quality of prizes awarded, they observed a major disparity: on average, women scientists win prizes associated with less money and prestige than men do. They found no evidence that the quality or value of women-led research is any lower than that of men, as measured by citations per article, productivity, or breadth of research topics studied. Interestingly, they also found that women are more likely to win prizes for service to biomedicine than awards for research—50% of these awards went to women from 2008 to 2017, suggesting overrepresentation.
When Elinor Ostrom won the Nobel Prize for her research on economic governance in 2009, it was the first (and so far, the only) time a woman won a Nobel for economics. That prize has existed for nearly 50 years.
We don’t do a great job of recognizing women’s contributions to science and innovation. Only two women have won the Nobel for physics in the nearly 100 years it has been conferred. The most prestigious prize in mathematics, the Fields Medal, has had just one female winner: the late Maryam Mirzakhani. And evidence suggests female academics are also less likely to receive grant funding due to gender bias.
My collaborators, Yifang Ma, Diego F. Oliveira, and Teresa Woodruff, and I wondered: Is one of the reasons why women are more likely to leave science than men because they don’t receive the same recognition? Do they not have access to the same incentives?
Prizes are a highly visible indicator of scientific recognition, and increasingly tied to big money: each Nobel prize winner, for example, is awarded over $1 million; the Breakthrough prize offers a full $3 million. Our study found that while women are indeed winning more prizes, they still lag significantly on prize quality: they win fewer prestigious prizes and less money than men, despite comparable quality of work.
To understand how recognition shapes women’s incentives to remain in science, we first had to get a good measure of those incentives. We sought to study a publicly visible science-research incentive: prizes. Our reasoning for this is that large prizes tend to be understood and appreciated by the broader public (more so than, say, the prestige of a given journal or the number of citations a research paper garners), and they also influence those who make decisions about scientific grants and other support.
While prizes and awards for scientific research have proliferated in recent decades, we haven’t yet delineated associated patterns: who tends to receive different kinds of awards, and how this might influence their motivation to continue their work or even to stay in the field.
Our study focused on prizes in the biomedical sciences. The rationale being that if we’re going to find gender equality anywhere in science—whether related to citations, prizes, or other success indicators and incentives—it would be in this field. Women have entered biomedicine in equal numbers to men since the early 2000s, and now represent about 30% of authorship on all research papers (our calculation in forthcoming research), clear evidence of a narrowing gender gap. In line with this, of all Nobels awarded to women, a full two-thirds have been for biomedical research.
Our approach was simple: we documented all biomedical research prizes we could find over the past five decades (1968-2017), from the big ones like the Nobel and the Breakthrough Prize to much smaller, lesser-known awards—628 prizes in all. We also considered the financial awards and prestige (measured by the average Wikipedia views for a given prize in recent years) associated with the prizes, as indicators of their quality. Then we measured the percentage of prizes won by women and the association between gender and prize quality.
Our initial results highlighted overall good news: the proportion of biomedical prizes awarded to women has risen steadily.
In the late 1970s, about 5% of prizes for biomedical research went to women, presumptively out of line with their participation rate (in 1974, for example, 22% of all students entering medical school were women) and suggesting a potential bias against female researchers. But over the past decade, that figure has stood at about 27%, well-aligned with the proportion of authorship women represent, suggesting decreased bias.
But there’s a not-so-silver lining. When we looked at the association between gender and quality of prizes awarded, we observed a major disparity: on average, women scientists win prizes associated with less money and prestige than men do. Female prizewinners earned an average of about 64 cents for every dollar won by men. Of the top 50% of all prizes by prestige, women won only 11% of the awards across our period of study. Importantly, as our forthcoming research suggests, there’s no evidence that the quality or value of women-led research is any lower than that of men, as measured by citations per article, productivity, or breadth of research topics studied.
So women are catching up in terms of number of prizes won (quantity), but still lag significantly in regard to the prestige and monetary awards associated with the prizes (quality).
Another interesting finding was that women are more likely to win prizes for service to biomedicine than awards for research—50% of these awards went to women from 2008 to 2017, suggesting overrepresentation. Not only are such awards considered lower-status than research-focused ones, but doing service work can be seen as taking precious time away from research activities that could result in greater recognition and advancement.
The bottom line: while on the surface it may appear that the gender gap has narrowed when it comes to science prizes, large inequity lurks just below, as women consistently win lower-quality prizes than men. Our study adds another piece of evidence to the growing body of work suggesting that women’s scientific contributions are under-recognized. But further work will be required to see how this gender gap in recognition affects female scientists’ motivations to stay in the field, and their contributions with in it.
The problem likely extends beyond the borders of science. In business, for example, prizes and funding for new technology and innovation may follow a similar pattern, helping to explain the similar leaky pipeline observed for female entrepreneurs, again backed up by empirical research. This is something worth examining in greater depth.
Our hope is to raise awareness of the ongoing gender gap in scientific award quality across stakeholders. Decision-makers in science can use the knowledge to identify and eradicate potential bias when it comes to awards, funding, and advancement. Women scientists can recognize that their high-quality work may fail to attract well-deserved recognition due to present disparities—but take hope that rising awareness may drive a near-term change. Broader society can understand that accepting the current inequalities is likely to hamper high-impact, women-led research that could benefit us all. It’s time for that to change.
Brian Uzzi is the Richard L. Thomas Professor of Leadership and Organizational Change at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management and the codirector of the Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO).
Research: Women Are Winning More Scientific Prizes, But Men Still Win the Most Prestigious Ones
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