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Female Nobel winner a long time coming, and a drop in the ocean
PARIS, Oct 3, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – When Canadian scientist Donna Strickland got
the early morning call informing her she just won the Nobel Physics Prize,
she could barely hide her amazement.
Not just that she had clinched one of science’s most prestigious honours –
– her pioneering work on laser pulses had earned her renown among the physics
community — but also that she was one of only three women to win the award
in its more than 100-year history.
“Is that all, really?!” she asked the audience assembled in the ornate,
wood-panelled hall at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm on
Tuesday morning.
“Well, OK. I thought there might have been more but I couldn’t think.”
In becoming the first women Nobel physics laureate in 55 years, Strickland
won acclaim from her peers, who were keen to point out the boundary-pushing
work done by female scientists across the world.
“There are women doing excellent research in all kinds of fields,” Roisin
Owens, biochemical engineer at University of Cambridge, told AFP.
She said that while historically it was true that far fewer women than men
worked in research, the scientific community needed to wake up the field’s
changing demographics.
“Sometimes people are looking in their own echo chamber, but the excuse of
‘oh, we couldn’t find any women (to reward)’ doesn’t wash anymore.”
Of the 112 physics prizes the Nobel committee has awarded since 1901, the
only women winners before Strickland were Marie Curie in 1903 and Maria
Goeppert Mayer in 1963.
– ‘Change is happening’ –
Jessica Wade, a researcher at Department of Physics and Centre for Plastic
Electronics at Imperial College London, was so fed up with women in the field
being overlooked that she spent the last year adding 270 Wikipedia entries on
women scientists.
MORE/AU/09:40 hrs
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She admits the scientific community has made some progress on the gender
gap — “schemes to support women in their return from maternity leave, shared
parental leave, policies to prevent sexual harassment and bullying” — but
the playing field is still far from even.
“There is also a growing, and concerning, area of society, who
contemporary politicians and social media are allowing to propagate old-
fashioned and sexist views,” she said.
Europe’s particle physics lab CERN suspended a scientist this week after
he suggested that physics was “built by men” and accused women of demanding
specialist jobs without suitable qualifications.
Alessandro Strumia of Pisa University shocked the audience at the Geneva
lab during a workshop on high energy theory and gender.
For Patricia Rankin, professor of Physics at the University of Colorado,
Boulder, Strumia’s suspension was an example that “change is happening” in
efforts to battle outright sexism in science.
But, she added: “I think there is a large list of barriers that women have
to overcome including unconscious bias, different expectations and demands on
their time.”
– Physics ‘built by men’? –
The Swedish academy said Tuesday it was encouraging more people to
nominate women for their science awards, “because we don’t want to miss
anyone.”
According to Jennifer Curtis, associate professor of physics at the
Georgia Institute of Technology, “awards beget awards… one important way to
promote female physicists is to make sure to nominate them.”
She said it was “fantastic” that Strickland had finally received
recognition.
– ‘Celebrate women scientists’ –
Wade pointed to the work of Dawn Shaughnessy, the American radiochemist
who discovered five elements in the periodic table, who has yet to be
formally honoured with a Nobel.
In addition, according to Andrea Welsh, a PhD student in physics at
Georgia Tech, women scientists were far less likely to seek nominations than
male peers.
“Nominating (yourself) for an award that gives you credit for work you
have already done is very different than nominating yourself to do more work,
especially in a field where your work is typically undervalued, where you are
spoken over frequently, where there is no one else saying that you deserve
something more,” she told AFP.
For Owens, the fact that the Nobels are awarded for individual rather than
team efforts could be another reason why there are so few women winners.
“My sense is that women often work towards the collective good and often
may sacrifice their individual career for advancing the community,” she said.
Last month, Jocelyn Bell Burnell, one of the world’s leading
astrophysicists who helped discovered pulsars, said she was donating her $3
million winnings from a prestigious science prize to help underrepresented
groups get into physics.
“There are so many fantastic women scientists and engineers and we need to
spend more time celebrating them,” said Wade.
“Support the professional development of young women, give them
opportunities to talk and network, mentor them and nominate them for prizes,
Nobel or otherwise.”
BSS/AFP/AU/09:45 hrs