Nobels nearly shut out women

After a year in which only one out of 13 Nobel laureates was a woman, a top official at the institution that awards some of the prizes dismissed the idea of gender quotas, saying the current system was in line with "the spirit of Alfred Nobel's last will."

Goran Hansson, secretary-general of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, said Monday in an interview with the Agence France-Presse news agency that it was "sad" that so few Nobel laureates have been women.

"It reflects on the unfair conditions in society, particularly in years past, but still existing and there's so much more to do," Hansson said. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awards the Nobel Prizes in physics and chemistry, as well as the Nobel in economics.

Since 1901, 943 individuals and 25 organizations have won Nobel Prizes and the Nobel in economics. Only 58 have been women.

Journalist Maria Ressa of the Philippines was the only woman to be awarded a Nobel this year, sharing the Peace Prize with another journalist, Dmitri A. Muratov of Russia. Together, they were recognized for "their courageous fight for freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace."

The lack of women awarded in the sciences this year felt like a "giant step backward," said Sandy Robert, CEO of the Association for Women in Science.

"The participation, leadership, and recognition of women and minorities in science has grown over the last 50 years," Robert said in a news release. "We encourage award committees to make more of an effort to identify underrepresented scientists and learn about their work."

Last year, several women were honored. The Nobel in chemistry was jointly awarded to Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna for their work on the development of CRISPR-Cas9, a method for genome editing. The Nobel in physics was shared by two men and a woman, Andrea Ghez, for discoveries that have improved understanding of the universe, including work on black holes. And the Nobel Prize in literature was awarded to Louise Glück, one of America's most celebrated poets.

Hansson said quotas on gender would not be implemented because "we worry that if somebody proposed to us, one year we would give the prize only to women." He continued, "Then it would be, we fear, considered that those laureates got the prize because they are women and not because they are the best."

Susan Perkin, a professor of physical chemistry at the University of Oxford, said Tuesday that having a quota for women or minorities was a "distraction" from the question of properly recognizing everyone who contributes to the sciences.