Why so few women/minorities among Nobel Prize Winners

[Gestalt]

I was recently perusing a list (http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/lists/all/) of all the nobel prize winners, and while I wasn't suprised at the plethora of white males in the earlier parts of the 20th century, it surprised me quite a bit that even from the 1970's on there were very few women. Also, I assumed that in the last 3-4 decades or so, Asians would be very well represented among the science winners, which is also not the case. Furthermore, it seems that most of the winners in recent decades are Europeans, especially in the sciences, which suprised me because I thought that the mega-institutions in the U.S. (Cal Tech, MIT, and such) churned out most of the global scientific breakthroughs.

So why is this? I know the Nobel committee has a reputation for being biased, but actually I thought thier bias went in the opposite direction of what this data seems to show; that is, I thought they were often accused of being "too PC" and awarding awards to women and minorities when actually white males deserved them more. Furthermore, are they known for having a bias towards Europeans over North Americans? Or, really, have the major contributions in all the areas except Peace (in which there is a fair share of women and minorities) been made by white male Europeans?

[BrainGlutton]

It is because, historically, up to about 1970, only white males have been allowed the opportunity to fully develop their potential as contributors to society or to any field of science or scholarship.

100 or even 20 years from now, the thread title will appear anachronistic, and meaningless except for historical purposes.

[Gestalt]

It is because, historically, up to about 1970, only white males have been allowed the opportunity to fully develop their potential as contributors to society or to any field of science or scholarship.

100 or even 20 years from now, the thread title will appear anachronistic, and meaningless except for historical purposes.

Right, but let's say women were first able to develop their academic potentials beginning in the 1970's, and around that time minorities internationally also began to compete for the scientific/academic spotlight; why is it that in the 30 years since then there are still so few women/minorities among the science winners? That was my primary question

[Gestalt]

Right, but let's say women were first able to develop their academic potentials beginning in the 1970's, and around that time minorities internationally also began to compete for the scientific/academic spotlight; why is it that in the 30 years since then there are still so few women/minorities among the science winners? That was my primary question

Upon further exploration of the Nobel prize site, it appears that the people with primary nominating power seem to be professors at the Royal Academy of Sweden, and professors at other scandanavian university. Which might explain why every other person who wins a nobel prize seems to be from Denmark or some such. Still, other opinions, Dopers?

[Telemark]

why is it that in the 30 years since then there are still so few women/minorities among the science winners? That was my primary question
Because it takes more than 30 years to bring an entire class of people to the elite level of the scientific world. Simply opening the doors of the university to women/minorities doesn't mean that the first small crop will be welcomed with open arms. They have no support infrastuctor or mentors, it's difficult to break the "old boy's" network. There are few role models.

Also, it takes many years after a discovery or breakthrough to recognize that the work is worthy. The work that people are receiving Nobel Prizes for was done many years ago.

[Shalmanese]

The nobel prize is notoriously conservative and only recognises the work of people many years after it has been developed and the scientific impact is clear. Thus, it wouldn't be surprising that it the full effects of modern participation by asians and women haven't been reflected in the nobel prizes yet.

[BrainGlutton]

The nobel prize is notoriously conservative . . .

Cite?

[Odesio]

Haven't a lot of Jews won the Nobel Prize? I would think they qualify as minorities.

Marc

[Wendell Wagner]

Let's split this up into the years 1901 through 1981 and the years 1982 through 2005. That's a little more than three times as long a period for the 1901-1981 era as for the 1982-2005 era. Look at the number of women winners in each era:

Physics: 2 in the earlier era and 0 in the later era
Chemistry: 3 in the earlier era and 0 in the later era
Physiology or Medicine: 2 in the earlier era and 5 in the later era
Literature: 6 in the earlier era and 4 in the later era
Peace: 6 in the earlier era and 6 in the later era

Given that the earlier era is over three times as long, it's clear that women are distinctly better represented in the later era for Physiology or Medicine, Literature, and Peace than in the early era. So in those fields, it is clear that women are now more likely to win Nobel Prizes than they used to be, although they aren't yet equally represented among the winners. There are so few women winners in Physics or in Chemistry that the split in numbers here doesn't indicate anything.

It appears to me from the announcements of Nobel Prize winners that I've heard that the winners tend to be fifty-ish and to have done their most important work about ten years before the prize is given. So the winners this year, if they are about 55, will have entered college in about 1969. In 1969, law schools and medical schools tended to have about 5% women in their classes, as opposed to about 45% today. I believe that grad schools in many scientific subjects had porportionately as much increase, although the proportions started lower, about 3% in many sciences in 1969 as opposed to 25% today. It's still a little early to expect to see the influx of large numbers of women reflected in the Nobel Prizes as yet.

[Wendell Wagner]

Furthermore, the universities and other research institutions in the U.S. are very well represented, especially after World War II. In the link, click on Prize Winners and Universities. Look at how many American universities and other research institutions are represented.

[Shalmanese]

Cite?

Uh, maybe that was a bit of a misunderstanding. I don't mean conservative in the political sense but that they are very cautious about giving out prizes until well after the scientific impact is clearly established. Looking though a quick summary of Nobel Physics Prizes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Prize_in_Physics#2000s)

2004:

The fact that asymptotic freedom is a feature of quantum chromodynamics (QCD), the quantum field theory of the interactions of quarks and gluons, was discovered by David Gross, Frank Wilczek, and David Politzer in 1973. For their discovery, Gross, Wilczek and Politzer were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2004.


2003:

In 1952, Abrikosov discovered the way in which magnetic flux can penetrate a superconductor. The phenomenon is known as type-II superconductivity, and the accompanying arrangement of magnetic flux lines is called the Abrikosov vortex lattice...He was the co-recipient of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Physics, with Vitaly Ginzburg and Anthony James Leggett.


2002:

The Homestake Experiment (sometimes referred to as the Davis Experiment) was an experiment headed by astrophysicists Raymond Davis, Jr. and John Bacall in the late 1960's... [Raymond Davis Jr]shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2002 with Japanese physicist Masatoshi Koshiba and American Riccardo Giacconi for pioneering contributions to astrophysics, in particular for the detection of cosmic neutrinos, looking at the solar neutrino problem in the Homestake Experiment.


Similar trends are evident in different fields as well.

[Kalhoun]

Maybe we were too busy just sittin' there lookin' pretty. (Is my lipstick on straight?)

[you with the face]

I know the Nobel committee has a reputation for being biased, but actually I thought thier bias went in the opposite direction of what this data seems to show; that is, I thought they were often accused of being "too PC" and awarding awards to women and minorities when actually white males deserved them more.

I'm interested in learning where you got this idea from. Can you cite examples of these accusations taking place?

I have never heard of the Nobel committee being PC but I wouldn't be surprised if they had that reputation just for the fact that there's Europeans in it. The UN is treated the same way.

[BrainGlutton]

I'm interested in learning where you got this idea from. Can you cite examples of these accusations taking place?

See this thread. (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=279912)

[you with the face]

See this thread. (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=279912)

Who was arguing that white guys were more deserving in that thread?

[BrainGlutton]

Who was arguing that white guys were more deserving in that thread?

Nobody in those terms exactly, but there were accusations of PCness.

[you with the face]

Nobody in those terms exactly, but there were accusations of PCness.

I sensed it was because of the limp-wristed, Burkenstock image associated with the category (Peace Prize), not because a black woman undeservedly was selected as the winner.

Really, I wish folks would think a little bit before they call something PC. All too often it comes across as code for "any outcome, policy, or terminology that offends me for reasons that I can't cogently articulate but all's I suspect is that it's got something to do with appeasing those women and minorities, and therefore its bad". When that charge is just thrown out there without any support its extra aggravating.

[Least Original User Name Ever]

Because they are dumb. Thats why.

[Thudlow Boink]

Aren't Europeans minorities, considered as part of the whole world's population?

[Bryan Ekers]

they are very cautious about giving out prizes until well after the scientific impact is clearly established.


Had I to guess, I'd say the groundbreaking work of Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar in 1930 getting him a Nobel in physics in 1983 is the longest such delay.

[BrainGlutton]

Aren't Europeans minorities, considered as part of the whole world's population?


Depends on how you define "minority." No cite, but in college (I was a polysci major) I once read an essay arguing for the position that blacks in South Africa shold be considered a "minority," because, although a majority in numbers, they were a minority in power.

[Sam Stone]

How many women are in the top rank of scientists in the first place? Women are still a very small minority in physics today. Chemistry is a little better, but men still predominate.

[BrainGlutton]

How many women are in the top rank of scientists in the first place? Women are still a very small minority in physics today. Chemistry is a little better, but men still predominate.

Do you have any theories as to why?

[Sam Stone]

Women just don't seem to gravitate towards 'analytical' fields. I have no idea why. Fields like biology and chemistry, which favor a different kind of thinking (less math, more categorization, empirical study, etc) seem to do much better.

Likewise in computing. It's interesting that in our office we don't have a single female software developer on the coding side, but we have a number of comp-sci graduate females who have all gravitated towards the QA/software test side of the field. Again, the breakdown seems to be that the women like the detail-oriented, empirical, categorizing, testing environment, while the men gravitate more towards the analytical side.

I honestly believe it could be a fundamental difference in how our brains are wired. Women seem to be better at organizaton, at keeping lots of tasks going and such, and men seem more single-tracked and focused on analysis. Maybe it's just the way we evolved - women had to care for the households, raising the children, etc, while men focused on the hunt, or at being good at the one thing that made them a living.

But that's just a WAG.

[Shagnasty]

Do you have any theories as to why?

The president of Harvard, Larry Summers got himself in a nice little scandal by speculating that there could be some innate differences between men and women that limit the number of women at the top of certain fields. The scandal was overblown IMHO and he only listed that as one possible cause. I don't think it is inconceivable either and my graduate work was in the neuroscience of sexual differentiation. Any aggregate measure of intelligence shows that males and females are just about equal. However, the distributions are very different and males have a much higher standard deviation meaning that you see mostly males clustered at the very far ends of the distribution. Specific components show differences between males and females as well with males as an aggregate scoring higher on the math and spatial cognition components and females higher on verbal.

http://www.slate.com/id/2113810/

Because the Nobel Prize presumably chooses those at the far end of understanding in their field, the outliers would tend to be male if the main criteria is a certain type of intelligence. However, that isn't the only criteria and there is another big one that also works against females. That type of science career is extremely demanding and makes it hard for women to fit in childbearing and child-rearing without something sacrificed. This impacts male scientists to some degree too but the social demands aren't the same. Science careers of that type usually mean forsaking anything resembling what regular people would consider a "life".

Females also have a self-selection bias working against them in terms of numbers engaged in different fields. The number of women in the biological sciences and medicine has grown to the point where there numbers will likely exceed men sometime in the future if they don't already. Shift over to math and physics and the ratio becomes very lopsided towards males.

[Wendell Wagner]

I don't know what the reason is that more women don't become scientists. It's irrelevant to the question in the OP though. As I said, people who are currently winning Nobel Prizes entered college thirty-five to forty years ago. At that time, a much smaller proportion of women even considered going to grad school in scientific subjects. Over that period, the proportion of women getting Ph.D.'s in scientific subjects has gone from about 3% to about 25%. It's too early to even expect the pool of women scientists eligible for Nobel Prizes to be large.

Here's an article in which someone offers an interesting explanation why currently less women go into graduate work in science:

http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science

The explanation given in the article is that the intelligent women who could enter grad school in the sciences don't do it because it's a terrible, risky choice for anyone intelligent enough to hope to make it as a scientist. You can almost certainly make more money going to medical school, law school, or graduate business school. And as I pointed out, the proportion of women in medical school or law schools is about 45% at the present time. While I think the situation is slightly exaggerated in this article, it's not too far from the truth. Men, on the other hand, (or so the article claims) are bigger risk takers, and willing to go into science even though rationally it's a bad deal.