By Laura Krusin
Money, money, money. It’s a rich man’s world and the rich get richer. The gender pay gap exists not only in salary, but in the amount received in research prizes. We discuss the effect this inequality has on the careers and wallets of female researchers.
The women leading the way in STEMM subjects are still being underpaid compared to their male counterparts. This pay gap exists not only in wages and PhD funding, but also with money from scientific awards being lower on average for female winners. This is worsened by the fact that women receive less attention for their work, no matter how ground breaking, meaning they are put up for fewer awards.
Whilst women winning prizes has been receiving increased media attention, highlighted by Donna Strickland winning the Nobel Prize for Physics and Frances Arnold winning the prize for Chemistry at the end of last year, women who do win prizes receive lower prize money and prestige than when prizes are awarded to men. A report by Nature found that female prize winners receive on average 64 cents for every dollar that a man receives across all science prizes awarded. For Nobel prizes specifically, there is also a disparity in award money. Since Nobel Prizes started in 1901, women have only received 2.77% of the total prize money awarded in the 118 years despite winning 3.29% of the prizes available. Whilst this may sound like a small difference, with the prize money per award amounting to 8 million SEK, the equivalent of over 1 million crisp British pounds, that small percentage adds up to quite a large sum.
The reason for this disparity in prize money may be down to women being nominated for less prestigious awards. In the most prestigious prizes, women are underrepresented, only making up 11.3% of the winners. This under-representation in research awards leads to an over-representation of women receiving service awards in areas such as teaching, advocacy, public service, and mentoring.
- A vicious cycle -
Historically, women receive less attention and credit for their work than it truly deserves. This in turn reduces the advancement of their research due to lack of funding and coverage. This has been coined the Matilda Hypothesis. The Matilda effect is the idea that women are often eclipsed by men within scientific fields, or any field for that matter, despite their research still being important and valid. As research by women is so often ignored, it has led to a very large difference in the amount of research prizes being awarded to them. This lack of prizes awarded to women impacts their future career, with granting agencies looking at prize winners to determine the recipients of vital grant money.
In total, 50 women have won Nobel prizes across the different categories, compared to 892 men. Of these 50 women 17 were awarded the Nobel peace prize and 14 literature. Only 19 women have ever won Nobel prizes in science. Among reasons already mentioned, one key reason for lack of awards being given to women is due to the credit being given to men.
Marie Curie was not originally recognised for her discovery of radiation by the French Academy of Sciences. Initially, they had only nominated Marie’s husband, Pierre Curie, and fellow scientist Henri Becquerel for the Nobel Prize in Physics. It was only due to her husband’s insistence that she was also nominated.
Unfortunately, Marie Curie is one of the lucky ones. Many women have not received recognition for their work at all or have only been acknowledged after their death. One such example is Rosalind Franklin who utilised x-ray crystallography to photograph the structure of DNA, providing the images which Watson and Crick used to prove their theory of DNA’s double helix structure. The two men went on to receive the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, whilst Franklin was excluded.
These are just a few of the many examples of women’s work and impact in science being overlooked and under-credited. But, they highlight the significance of media attention and coverage in furthering the equality of women in STEMM. It is only with public interest that research is nominated for awards and it is only with awards that research is funded. Therefore, it is crucial that female scientists are given more time of day, which is something we can all get behind, as it will widen the breadth of global research, as well as provide a shining horizon for all women beginning their careers in STEMM.