Nobel Laureate Gender Gap Why are there so few female laureates? The Nobel Prize empowers

Since its inception in 1901, 645 people have won the Nobel Prize in Natural Sciences. Among them, Marie Curie, Pauling, Bardeen, Sanger and Sharpless won the award twice. If we count the actual number of winners, there are 640 giants who have won the Nobel Prize in Science. Correspondingly, to date, there are only 25 female Nobel laureates in science, accounting for only 39%, less than 4%.

Even in the field of physiology or medicine, which has the largest number of female Nobel laureates in science, the ratio of male to female Nobel laureates in science is still only 165:1。Why are female Nobel laureates so rare?

Previously, the author had discussed whether there was gender discrimination in the Nobel Prize in science evaluation in an article published on WeChat *** in "Intellectuals". After an in-depth examination of some of the most controversial and seemingly most convincing cases of the "sexist theory", the author has come to the following conclusions:

Many female scientists fail to win the Nobel Prize, largely because the Nobel Prize itself is not flexible in its evaluation mechanism. This is not unlike the experience of many of Zuckerman's "forty-first seats" (the French Academy of Sciences has only forty seats in total, and those who qualify for admission but are not able to do so for some reason are called "forty-first seats"), so it seems that the "sexist theory" of the Nobel Prize judges is at least not supported by concrete evaluation facts.

In discussing this issue, it is important to note that there are 25 women in the world who have won the Nobel Prize in the natural sciences, but this does not mean that they can be examined directly in the framework of the whole world, because the situation varies greatly from country to country. Although some countries are more open-minded on gender issues and have a higher status of women, their scientific and technological strength is relatively weak and cannot meet the Nobel Prize evaluation criteria. Although some countries have super scientific and technological strength, due to their own social and cultural reasons, female scientists have not yet emerged. If comparisons are made hastily, differences between countries are ignored and results are less accurate.

It is worth mentioning that a small half of the 25 female Nobel laureates in science are from the United States, and the United States is also unique in the history of the Nobel Prize, cultivating nearly half of the Nobel laureates, which shows that the United States has super scientific and technological strength; It is also a well-known fact that the status of women in the United States is also relatively high. If there are few female Nobel laureates even in the United States, let alone elsewhere. Therefore, next, I plan to take the United States as an example to carry out a preliminary investigation.

1. The imbalance between men and women in science.

As early as 1975, Zuckerman and J. Cole, in their article "Women in American Science", took female scientists in physics and biology in the United States as the research object, and pointed out that the gap between men and women in these two fields will widen dramatically with the increase in the level (college students, doctoral students, scientific researchers). The explanations they give for this phenomenon are: first, it is the result of the combined effect of social choice and self-selection; Second, the existence of limited differences, that is, in a community with limited resources and highly competitive rewards, a series of special external factors impact scientists, and female scientists will be more affected than male scientists, which directly affects the quantity and quality of scientific research achievements of female scientists.

Even decades later, Zuckerman's work remains unobsolete. In 1994, the journal Science provided a set of data: in the United States from 1992 to 1993, the proportion of women among assistant professors, associate professors, and professors was. 4%。In addition, a recent report commissioned by L'Oréal** from the Boston Consulting Group also shows that women decline faster than men in the process of moving to higher levels, which means they are more likely to give up and achieve higher levels of achievement.

Figure 1 Proportion of women at all levels of the scientific community.

As can be seen in Figure 1, in the United States, 29 percent of women are engaged in scientific research, 11 percent hold senior scientific research positions, and only 3 percent of women have won the Nobel Prize in Science. This compares to 71 per cent of men working in scientific research, 89 per cent of men holding senior scientific research positions, and 97 per cent of men winning Nobel Prizes. In the process of promotion to senior scientific research positions, women are clearly at a disadvantage.

In 1979, Cole's Just Science: Women in the Scientific Community was published, the first monograph to systematically study women scientists. Cole also took the American scientific community as a sample to analyze the status of female scientists in the scientific community from several dimensions, including the relationship between gender status and scientific recognition, the relationship between gender status and the prestige of the institution, the relationship between gender status and salary, and the difference in the output rate of male and female scientists. One conclusion he came to was that the degree of discrimination against female scientists was fairly minor – certainly lower than that faced by graduate students in low-prestige departments; In other words, in each of these dimensions, if there is a difference between male and female scientists, the difference is not very large.

However, as Figure 1 shows, women who can be called "scientists" make up only 11% of the entire scientific community, thus losing their representation to a certain extent. In fact, Cole goes further in his monograph what he calls the "mystery of scientific output". If we base our conclusions on the fact that there is little difference between male and female scientists, it is difficult to explain that female scientists are significantly inferior to male scientists in terms of scientific output and promotion.

Generally speaking, there are two main indicators of scientific research output: the number of achievements and the citation rate of achievements. Compared with the proportion of people in general, these two can more intuitively and accurately depict the state of women scientists within the scientific community as a whole. Cole's research shows that, first, women collaborate on publishing results at a lower rate than men; Second, female scientists have greater difficulty publishing in journals than men, and the citation rate of their results is also significantly lower. Third, as they grow older, female scientists are also at a disadvantage in terms of winning research grants and awards. Combining these factors, Cole came to a further conclusion: male scientists are more likely to obtain higher positions than female scientists, especially in prestigious universities or research institutes. Female scientists are less prestigious and diseminent than male scientists, and they rarely become members of the team that make major contributions, and their work is rarely valued. It is clearly more effective to describe the difference in the proportion of men and women among Nobel laureates in science than to simply emphasize the number.

Therefore, instead of discussing why the scientific community discriminates against or rejects women, it is better to discuss why women lose out to men in the output of research results in the process of scientific research. There are different interpretations of this issue: first, there is a natural gender difference between men and women in scientific research ability, and this view has been supported by strong evidence; second, it is social choice that leads to gender differentiation; Third, it is individual choice that leads to gender differentiation.

2 Women in Society: The Impact of Gender Stereotypes.

Sexism and gender stereotypes or role expectations are two fundamentally different concepts. In short, sexism is subjective and conscious; Whereas, stereotypes are objective and unconscious. In fact, the general belief that men should be more competitive, more suitable for science, etc., are all gender stereotypes, which are caused by gender biological differences and social culture. The two concepts must not be confused when discussing gender differences in research contributions and gender discrimination in research processes.

Starting from the family of origin, both men and women will be bound by various gender stereotypes. We know that the influence of family on personal growth is mainly reflected in childhood, and personal personality and future career choices are closely related to family education in childhood. Through the analysis of the family situation of female Nobel laureates, we can also see that most of them come from families with high knowledge level, good economic conditions and relatively open-minded ideas, which is bound to play a positive role for them. In addition to allowing them to have some "bisexual" personality traits, they also cultivate a passion for pursuing science that is not utilitarian.

However, in general, most families will unconsciously choose different ways when raising their offspring. Research shows that many parents want their boys to be active, proactive, and curious; As for his own girl, I hope she is gentle, quiet, more obedient, and not "boyish". To a certain extent, this restricts the freedom of girls to explore the world, which is not conducive to cultivating their curiosity about the world and science. In preschool life, toys that children are often exposed to also have a "gender". In contrast, boys usually get more diverse and high-tech toys, such as toy airplanes, cars, puzzles, etc.; Girls' toys are simpler, usually dolls and storybooks. In the counters of shopping malls, boys' and girls' toys are often placed separately, and the color will give people a strong psychological hint: boys' toys are generally dominated by cool colors, while girls' toys are mostly pink or colorful designs, and parents will unconsciously think that blue and green, which look calm and generous, are more suitable for boys. Parental choices can actually influence children's choices, and over time, boys and girls can develop the same gender stereotypes as their own parents.

The effects of this stereotype continue. When they enter school, there are also differences in the way boys and girls are trained, although it seems that the subjects they study are the same. However, in the study and activities, the boys are more guided to the field of science, cultivating their interest and hands-on ability in physics, chemistry, etc.; For female students, it is hoped that they will pay more attention to the liberal arts or arts. Even in textbooks, there is a bias in the depiction of men and women: men are more likely to appear as social elites, while women are more like housewives in the family. Even when there are cases where boys are more interested in the arts and girls prefer physics, they or they are forced to follow this pattern of education because of society's expectations of their roles. It wasn't until high school that the distinction between liberal arts and science became more pronounced, and girls would hear more voices from around them and think that girls were not good at mathematics and science. In the absence of adequate support and role models, many girls also think that their journey to science must be extremely difficult, so they choose to give up early.

However, with the development of society, women have proved that they can in fact achieve academic results that are not inferior to those of men. This point has been supported by many data in developed countries in Europe and the United States. Many surveys in the United States have shown that girls generally do better in school than boys, and the number of women earning science degrees has steadily increased in recent years, gradually equalizing with men. As this trend has become more apparent, the stereotypes of home and school have gradually changed, but their effects have not yet been completely eliminated.

In 2012, the U.S. Bureau of Statistics released a trend chart showing how women are in science and engineering careers

Figure 2 Employment of women in science, technology and engineering.

It can be seen that, compared with the data provided by Science magazine and the Boston Consulting Group, the proportion of women in the United States working in the basic sciences has increased significantly in recent years, the engineering field is basically flat, and the computer field has decreased significantly, while the social science field has increased significantly. This shows that American women have been able to gain more access to the scientific community and are increasingly able to play to their strengths.

The fact that American women have more opportunities to enter the scientific community is not a purely cultural issue, but is behind the efforts that the United States has made since the founding of the country to provide women with higher education.

In 1836, Georgia Women's College (the first women's college to offer a bachelor's degree) was established, and women's access to higher education began to increase. In 1837, Oberlin College accepted four women into the school, becoming the first coeducational college in the United States. In 1856, Iowa also introduced coeducation. Prior to the Civil War, at least 12 state universities or small western church colleges had coeducation.

Similarly, in the process of exploration, American colleges and universities were initially unclear about what kind of education should be provided to women. Peck College in Brooklyn wanted to "establish a thorough and perfect education that the best college boys are enjoying." Emma Willard's Troy School for Girls wanted to provide women with a "different kind of learning than the ones that are suitable for men, because women have different characteristics and responsibilities." However, in general, compared with boys' schools in this period, the girls' schools in this period had the following characteristics: first, they paid more attention to science education; secondly, the proportion of advanced mathematics in the teaching content varies greatly (boys' schools pay more attention to this aspect of teaching); Third, home economics education is not actually the focus of girls' school professors; Fourth, pay attention to experimental teaching and instrument operation; Fifth, the teaching staff is significantly weaker than that of boys' schools.

Even so, the mainstream voice of society at the time was against women learning too much about science. In the mid-19th century, most of the American women who could leave their names in the history of science appeared as assistants to their husbands, who were not necessarily inferior in research talent but whose work was hardly recognized. However, their talents as "assistants" have led the American scientific community to recognize that, at least in the fields of botany and biology, women with scientific education can serve as free assistants. This is a big reason for the U.S. scientific community to support women's access to science.

During the interwar period, many schools began to admit women to the sciences in large numbers due to the pressure of students and the special needs of wartime, and women were able to play a greater role in the sciences. 20th century.

Six. In the 10s and 70s, the deepening of the women's movement gave women more opportunities to enter the field of science. Many schools are under pressure to lift blatant discrimination against women and minorities. The enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Title IX of the Education Act of 1972 made it illegal to discriminate on the basis of sex.

Since the founding of the United States, the path for women to enter the scientific world has not been smooth sailing, but has experienced ups and downs, and has been deeply imprinted by the times. But in any case, the women's movement has won many rights for American women, contributed to the rise of the concept of equal rights, and reflected on gender stereotypes, which objectively have indeed created a better research environment for female researchers in the United States.

It must be acknowledged, however, that even in the United States, scientific structures are constructed to conform to traditional male roles, and this structure is based on traditional female roles. The fact that women are more committed to the family allows men to concentrate on their work, and from an economic point of view, it is difficult for bosses to entrust women with the same important responsibilities; From a physiological point of view, women are congenitally inferior to men in physical strength and may not be able to cope with extremely busy and tiring scientific research tasks; From the perspective of social relations, men will adopt an unconscious "anti-suspicion" attitude towards their female colleagues or subordinates. Tim Hunt, winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, once publicly stated, "Let me tell you about the trouble between me and the girl. There are three things that happen in the lab: you're going to fall in love with them, they're going to fall in love with you, and they're crying when you criticize them. There are many such ideas, and academic institutions are not a gender insulation zone for women.

The direct impact of these perceptions is that women are unable to find their own suitable roles in academia, which greatly discourages them. Very few women are willing to follow the male model of academia (successful and dedicating all their time and experience to scientific work and competing with their peers), and they prefer to find a model that allows for a balance between work and private life.

One can imagine how difficult it is for women to achieve in such an environment, which makes us even more admired for the female scientists who have won the Nobel Prize. Of course, many of them also have good colleagues who have even helped them a lot in winning the Nobel Prize in science, but these cases can only be described as isolated for the time being.

3 Women in the Family: The Impact of Marriage and Childbearing.

Many people would argue that marriage and childbearing can have a significant impact on female scientists. Zuckerman, on the other hand, gave a negative answer. Zuckerman used the number of scientists' publications as a measure of scientific research results, and selected 120 American scientists, including 73 women and 47 men. Through a statistical analysis of the number of female scientists in various situations, four questions are answered: as a whole, married women are no more prolific than single women in publishing; Among married women, there was no significant difference in the number of publications** by scientists with children compared with those without children; The number of publications by female scientists did not decrease after the birth of the child; The number of children of female scientists is not related to the results of their research. The final conclusion, of course, is obvious, that marriage and childbearing have no effect on the scientific achievements of women scientists.

The flaw of Zuckerman's study is that it does not take into account the peculiarities of the marriage and fertility of female scientists. Female scientists have higher rates of unmarriage and divorce than male scientists, tend to have children later, and devote far less energy to raising children than the average woman. On the other hand, the sample is completely superior to that of scientists in the United States, which itself has a strong peculiarity. Two conclusions are obvious: first, marriage and childbearing generally have a hard to ignore impact on female researchers; Second, the relatively well-established social security system in the United States and the cultural atmosphere created by feminists' critical reflection on the "traditional role of mothers" can alleviate the anxiety of female researchers in this regard to a certain extent and help them focus more on scientific research.

More powerful support tends to come from the spouses of female scientists. The 1963 Nobel Laureate in Physics, Maria Goppert Meyer (an American scientist), once said, "I would never have been able to come to Stockholm without Joe [her husband, a Nobel laureate in chemistry]." In 1938, after the birth of her second child, Maria Goppert Meyer wanted to give up her career in science to become a stay-at-home mother, but her husband strongly discouraged her.

In any case, the impact of fertility on female scientists is undeniable. In her autobiography, the 1977 winner of the Prize in Physiology or Medicine, Rosalyn Yello (an American scientist), said: "When my son was nine years old, I was able to concentrate on returning to the scientific research of my life." The reason for this is best explained by the words of the 1964 chemistry laureate Dorothy Crawford Hodgkin (a British scientist): "The key question now is the amount of time a person spends at work. Once women have children, they have to work out of science for a long time, which makes their work and study incoherent, so they progress more slowly than men. ”

As you can imagine, for the average female researcher, marriage and childbearing can still have a negative impact on them. This effect occurs mainly in three periods: raising children while in graduate school, getting married while looking for a job, and becoming pregnant before taking office. It is generally believed that both academics and families require women's full attention, and during pregnancy or after the birth of a child, women have no time to take care of their careers; Even if a female graduate student does not remain single during her studies, it may be seen as not taking the subject seriously. This belief that women will succumb to the pressure to have children has made bosses particularly cautious about their treatment of female subordinates, especially when money is tight.

Marriage is another obstacle for women to enter the scientific world. There are two reasons for this: the first is that the location is not easy to choose, and the laboratory is often reluctant to hire a couple at the same time, so the couple has to look for a position separately, and the end result is either a compromise between the two and giving up the best opportunity, or often the woman has to give up her career to accommodate her husband so that he can get a better position. The second is that in the traditional role expectation that men must take their careers seriously, while women should value their families more than their jobs and make sacrifices for their husbands, the pressure of this role expectation comes from society and relatives, and in this expectation, women have to endure the prejudice from their superiors and colleagues about their careers and dedication, and the result is that it is obviously difficult for women to take on important positions.

However, it is unrealistic to hope that the woman herself or the small circle she belongs to will overcome this negative effect. This is actually a manifestation of gender stereotypes and role expectations in women's careers, and if society's perception of women is no longer closely integrated with the family, then the influence of the family on women's pursuit of careers will gradually diminish.

4. Women as individuals: the play of their own advantages.

It is interesting to note that the number of women scientists who have won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine far exceeds the number of women who have won the Prize in Physics and Chemistry. This cannot be said to be an accident. Women account for about 46 percent of those who earn PhDs in biology in the United States, roughly the same number as men and more than the proportion of women earning PhDs in other sciences. A 2004 report in the United Kingdom showed that the number of women in biology and medicine exceeded that of men among full-time first-year undergraduates in the United Kingdom, and that the number of women in biology was almost twice as high as that of men. In addition, in the fields of psychology, social sciences, and education, women are also quite active, at least not inferior to men.

We mentioned gender stereotypes and discussed their impact on women's careers in science, but on the other hand, the so-called gender stereotypes are also a long-term induction and summary of the performance of male and female personalities. It is undeniable that, in general, women are indeed more careful than men, and are suitable for careers in education, medical and other industries; Men also seem to be better suited to areas that are more work-intensive and require more logical thinking. While gender stereotypes limit the advancement of men and women in certain fields, they also provide more opportunities for men and women in other areas that are generally considered to be better. In addition, if we look at the ratio of men and women in high-risk and high-intensity occupations, we find that there are very few women. In this respect, gender stereotypes are also intended to protect women. If there is an opportunity for women to play to their strengths, I believe they will be able to contribute more.

At this point, we can preliminarily draw the following conclusions:

The number of men and women who have won the Nobel Prize in science varies greatly in their respective groups, and this cannot be explained solely by the existence of gender discrimination within the scientific community, but in fact there are deeper reasons.

From a social point of view, gender stereotypes have created a relatively common role expectation of women, which is not suitable for the preferences of the scientific community, and thus limits the development of women in the scientific community. From the perspective of families, marriage and childbirth have a greater impact on women, so that they often have to lower their scientific research expectations, or even interrupt their scientific research careers, so that many women who had the opportunity to become scientific elites are gradually distancing themselves from the Nobel Prize.

Admittedly, the myths of traditional gender roles remain undebunked. Both feminists and anti-feminists have different attitudes towards traditional gender roles for the purpose of fighting for women's rights, that is, procreation not only restricts women's rights, but also increases sexual rights, so how to break and establish gender roles is still a difficult problem. The impact of marriage and childbearing on female researchers has not diminished, and in this regard, we should perhaps seek solutions from the disruption and establishment of traditional male roles, as well as the support of society as a whole.

Happy Women's Day