Gender diversity in Nominations for Nobel Prizes

Gender diversity in Nominations for Nobel Prizes

Alfred Nobel is the founder of the famous Nobel prizes who had left an immense fortune to establish the Nobel prizes. Before his death, Alfred clearly stated that the interest from the investment of his wealth should get annually distributed in the form of awards to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the most significant benefit on humanity (Richard, 2000). The prizes have become an important symbol of scientific achievement and discovery and they annually generates enormous interest in the scientific community and the general public (Yves and Mathews, 2009) . Alfred Nobel made it clear for all fields that there would be no favouritism accorded when giving the prices, instead, the most worthy candidate, regardless of their nationality would receive the prize.

It is not clear the criteria applied by the Nobel committees when nominating science candidates, but they have seemingly remained fixed over a long period evident in the gender bias. According to Hillevi (2016), an intelligent woman cannot be a real woman because it is only men, who seem creative and active, can achieve such brilliance, of which women, who are passive and uncreative, can only imitate.Therefore, this bias may be attributed to the notion that scientific prowess is linked to gender.

Over the years, very few women have received Nobel science prizes because the awards mostly recognise scientific works from the era when there were few or even no female scientific researchers. In line with Robert (1989), when the committee was worried that the prestige of the awards had begun to wane, not the least because of the sinking value of the prize money, one of the committee member, Oseen, saw that  awarding Einstein would bring his enormous international prestige and fame to the Nobel institution. Therefore, in this case, Einstein was awarded the prize not because there was a deficiency in modern day women scientists, but because of the prestige, his name would accord the Nobel institution. During the era of Einstein, there were no female scientists and therefore if the awards are based on past scientific records, no women will receive the award.

When nominating scientists for Nobel prizes, the committees should consider gender equality in addition to work quality. Famous scientists receive a lot of credit that may sometimes seem unproportional to their actual contributions, much to the disappointment of younger or less known scholars (Amin et al., 2011). Younger and less known scientists live in the shadows of the great scientists, and they are not given enough time and support to showcase their potential. Those young scientists include modern day women whose predecessors never had a chance to showcase their scientific prowess in the past, but since in the modern day world gives importance to gender diversity, women now have an opportunity to be great and renowned scientific researchers. Therefore, the Nobel committees should give these young women scientists a chance and see what they are capable of achieving and whether their discoveries are worthy of receiving the prestigious Nobel award.

Nobel prize winners in the science category are highly predictable because they must be among the highly cited scientists. According to Eugene and Morton (1968), unless the ground rules for the selection of Nobel Prize winners change, it is impossible that any scientist could achieve the award unless they have published works that have impacted the scientific community.  Although the scientists should be highly known for their works for them to get nominated as a Nobel prize winner candidate, this criteria does not give women a fair chance since most of those famous scientists have dominated the field for a long time. The use of citation data as the only criteria for nomination isolates the creative, innovative, or above-average group of scientists from the massive total population of scientists who have the potential to become renowned scientists.

In conclusion, the lack of gender diversity in awarding the prestigious Nobel prizes has raised a lot of concerns and criticism. The lack of women representation is most visible in the scientific awards. The criteria used for these nominations should be reviewed not only to include work quality but also gender diversity.

References

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