Still Think Women Get Awards For Just Participating? Studies Disagree

For every award female academicians receive, their male counterparts win eight awards, a study published in the Nature Human Behaviour journal found. The study also found that 47% of the awards that are named after female scientists go to women, while male academicians receive the majority. The study analysed 9,000 awardees and 346 scientific prizes for revelations on the representation and recognition of women in academics. According to a report by the University of Birmingham, men receive 53% of the awards that are named after notable women in science, revealing the stark underappreciation of women's contributions to science. 

Katja Gehmlich, Associate Professor at the Institute of Cardiovascular Science, University of Birmingham, is the joint lead author of the study. She spoke about the saddening reality of women's recognition in the global science landscape despite efforts to elevate their representation.

Indifference to Female Scientists

The gender gap between awardees in scientific prizes is sadly a product of a long, systematic issue of poor representation of women in sciences. Despite decades of efforts to rebalance this issue, our study shows that women are still poorly recognized for their scientific contributions, and men are far more likely to win prizes and awards, in particular, if those awards are named after other men," she said in the report.

She further said that 88% of awards named after male scientists go to men. Gehmlich said, "It seems particularly shocking to me that awards named after women still see more than half of prizes going to men because of how significantly skewed the data is for male-named awards."

Efforts to bridge the gap

Katja Gehmlich mentioned that the science community is actively looking for solutions to the gender skew in award recipients in academics. 

"We further propose a list of actions to address and overcome these issues but are aware this will be a long process. A 'Nominate Her' movement is one way that the scientific community can begin to address this," she proposed.

The co-lead author of the study, Stefan Krause from the University of Birmingham's School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences mirrored Gehmlich's thoughts and explained the purpose of their study.

"Our data is indicative of much wider issues of gender inequality within sciences. Our current publication is an initial attempt to understand the causes of such striking gender inequality and to promote discussion on the subject within our scientific communities," he said.

Krause also added a notable point, that almost two-thirds of scientific prizes are currently named after men.

"Research culture has a lot to do to improve the gender prize gap that we see perpetuating to this day.... More radical pathways may also be needed, such as renaming or getting rid of gender names associated with some awards," he said.

While women are shining with their contributions in science, technology and entrepreneurship, the regressive skew in felicitating their efforts exposes the gender bias towards women in STEM.