Women in STEM Win The Nobel Prize

The Nobel Prize is one of the most highly recognized awards around the world. The categories are Physics, Chemistry, Literature, Peace, Physiology or Medicine, and Economic Sciences. The awards began in 1901 and have become one of the highest honors one can possibly receive.

The Nobel Prize. - Credit: Canva

According to the Nobel Prize website, since 1901, only 50 women have been awarded the Nobel Prize. One was Marie Curie, who has been awarded twice (making the total awards for women 51). Reported as of 2017, 48 women and 844 men have won the Nobel Prize. I don't know about you, but those statistics make me a little uneasy.

This past week I was scrolling through Twitter as I usually do, when I came across a tweet from NPR saying that in 117 years, only 3 women have won the Nobel Prize in Physics. I was shocked, but I figured Physics was only one category and maybe the gap wasn't so huge between genders for every category.

I started to do some digging. That's when I found that the two categories women have won most in is Peace (16) and Literature (14), followed closely behind by medicine (12). In total only 9 women have won in either Physics, Chemistry or Economic Sciences.

2018, however, has been a great year for women in STEM. Not only did Donna Strickland bring home the Nobel Prize in Physics for women for the first time in 55 years, but Frances Arnold also became the first American women to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Donna Strickland, first women in 55 years to win Nobel Prize in Physics. - Credit: Peter Power/Reuters

Strickland won her award “for groundbreaking inventions in the field of laser physics." She admitted to being a bit shocked when she found out she was only the third women to win the award in physics. However, many scientists admitted that its a male-dominated field. NPR stated that Joanne Cole, a particle physicist at Brunel University London in the UK, said "We've tried really hard to encourage more women into physics, but it just doesn't seem to be happening."

Frances Arnold won her award “for the directed evolution of enzymes.” “I’m sure that there are people who are skeptical that a woman can do this job as well as a man. I am blissfully unaware of such people — and have been gifted with the ability to ignore them completely," stated Arnold in a 2014 interview with NPR.

Frances Arnold, first American women to win Nobel Prize in Chemistry. - Credit: Getty Images

I hope that both Arnold's and Strickland's work inspire young girls to be interested in STEM. We need to provoke interest at lower levels, showing girls at a young age that science is not a man's field, and that our world is not a man's world.

Credit: Wix

If you'd like to read more on this check out these articles:

- https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2014/10/27/358640844/is-leaning-in-the-only-formula-for-womens-success-in-science

-https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/frances-arnold-nobel-prize-chemistry_us_5bb4d3d7e4b0876eda9a34ad

- https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/02/science/donna-strickland-nobel-prize-physics.html

-https://www.npr.org/2018/10/02/653639583/the-nobel-prize-in-physics-117-years-three-women-and-counting?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

- https://www.wired.com/story/theres-nothing-noble-about-sciences-nobel-prize-gender-gap/