…and yet another Nobel Prize goes to men
The 2024 Nobel prize winners in Medicine or Physiology, Physics, and Chemistry were announced lately, and - imagine that - all are men. Seven for seven, just when we had thought that the two women out of eight awardees last year signaled that a change had finally come. Seriously, people? Was there really not a single woman involved in the discoveries awarded this year, or in others equally worthy? It has been a few decades now that women have had the right to rise to the top of Academia already… yet it is still the old white men collecting the prizes.
But then again, why would I expect any different, now that I've been on the other side of how prizes in Academia are awarded. Ultimately, decisions are made in rooms where old white men sit around a table and exchange the names of People They Know - who are bound to be their old white male colleagues. Some prizes invite external nominations, but even when they do, there is an unspoken, unwritten line of old white men waiting for their prizes, and they rely on their cronies to select them - and these cronies bank on one day being selected themselves. Even when there are women in the room, the general feel is one of old white men congratulating one another with pats on their reciprocal backs, with the women duly joining in recognition of their old white male mentors.
Other prizes are shamelessly awarded to whomever the “committee” knows that will retire soon and “needs the recognition". And when prizes are meant for younger scientists, it is their still mostly old white male advisors who nominate them, so these old white male advisors are gaining recognition by proxy when their mentees receive prizes. Argh.
Silly me had some naive idea that awards were given after thoughtful consideration of all candidates and review of their accomplishments, regardless of age, sex, nationality, or, most importantly, the pull of their nominators (seu QI: Quem Indica).
How do we change that? We persist. We insist. We, believers in fair and meaningful recognition of our efforts and accomplishments with awards and prizes, whatever our sex, age and nationality, stand undefeated, despite our repeated losses. Most importantly, when an opportunity arises for us to take positions of power, we SEIZE them. We become editors, hiring committee members, chairs, even when the pay for those extra positions is little to none, or shamelessly less than what was previously offered to our male colleagues. And once we have the power, we put our foot down and make decisions happen the way they were supposed to.
Speaking of which, I am about to go talk to a bunch of female scientists at the Autonomous University of México about what it is like to be a female in academia. I am an editor, I am a scientist with a public face, I am have an opportunity to go rile them up… and I'm seizing it.