Edited by Angeli Alexia
The Nobel Prize was established in 1985 by Swedish Alfred Nobel, who also invented dynamite, to dedicate his fortune to reward those who confer “the greatest benefit to humankind”. The inaugural edition was held in December of 1901.1
Since then, it has been conferred 68 times on women, with one receiving the award twice, thus meaning that the Commission awarded a total of 67 women in 124 years.2
On the other hand, 927 men received this prestigious prize in the same time frame, representing a percentage of over 90%.3
The first to have this honour was Marie Curie, who is also the only woman to be awarded twice, in chemistry and physics, respectively in 1911 and 1903. Her legacy is further cemented by her distinction as the sole Nobel Prize laureate with a family in the historical annals of the award. Her husband, Pierre Curie, shared with her the 1903 prize and her daughter, Irene Joliot-Curie, won the 1935 Nobel Prize in chemistry with her husband, Frederic Joliot-Curie. Her youngest daughter, Ève, did not win herself but was married to 1965 Nobel peace prize Henry Richardson Lanouisse Jr.
Apart from Marie Curie, only two other women had won before 1926. Bertha Von Suttner won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1905 being the only female attending the opening of the 1899 Hague peace conference, successfully supporting the establishment of the Permanent court of Arbitration, which was thought to end the war. Selma Lagerlöf won the prize in Literature in 1909 with “the saga of Gösta Berling”.
The domains considered include literature (18 women out of 104 men), chemistry (8 out of 191), physics (5 out of 226), medicine (14 out of 218) and peace (20 out of 92). As it can be shown by this graph, the majority of these women were awarded the prize for their contribution in world peace and literature. Particularly for STEM fields, the percentage is astonishingly low, with only a 4% female representation and a growth of +1% over the past thirty years. These numbers are not proportional to the percentage of women currently opting for academic careers in STEM fields, which is experiencing substantial growth.4 In 2018, Donna Strickland won the Nobel prize in physics, 55 years after the previous woman, Maria Goeppert Mayer in 1963, who was the first to receive it after Marie Curie, 60 years before.
An important note should be given to the prize share of these winners. In fact, in 50.9% of the cases, the win was shared with men. A total of 26 women have been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature alone, constituting 45.6% of the total number of laureates. While this percentage may appear to be satisfactory, it is imperative to consider that the majority of these awards are typically bestowed upon personam. If we don’t look at these instances (17), the percentage decreases at 23.1%. There is, in fact, a shared 1966 Nobel prize in Literature in the case of Nelly Sachs and Shmuel Yosef Agnon.
It is noteworthy that the only woman to have won the prize by herself in her respective field, in this case physics, was Dorothy Crowford Hodgkin in 1964. In the field of medicine, Barbara McClintock was the first woman to receive the prize in 1983. To date, however, no woman has won the prize in chemistry on her own.
As for literature, the Nobel Peace Prize has been bestowed on a single individual on numerous occasions, as evidenced by the 2025 award to Maria Corina Machado “for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy”.
There are three cases in which the prize is shared between women only. The 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna, “for the development of a method for genome editing”. The 2011 Nobel Peace Prize was shared by Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkoi Karman, “for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work”. Eventually, The 1976 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan, “for the courageous efforts in founding a movement to put an end to the violent conflict in Northern Ireland”.
The gender disparity is also evident in the geographical provenience of the winners, which is slowly diversifying but is currently dominated by Europe, guided by France and followed by the USA, which is home to 17 winners. This is true particularly in scientific fields, while in literature and peace categories there is more diversity. The first Nobel winner for the African continent was the Kenyan Wangari Maathai, who received the Peace prize in 2004 “for her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace”.
It is noteworthy that Italy has two significant mentions in this regard: Rita Levi-Montalcini, who received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1986 “for their discoveries of growth factors”; and Grazia Deledda, Nobel prize winner in literature in 1926 “for her idealistically inspired writings which with plastic charity picture the life on her native island and with depth and sympathy deal with human problems in general”.
Worth noticing are also:
- Tu Youyou, a 2015 Nobel Prize laureate in Physiology or Medicine from China, was honored “for her discoveries concerning a novel therapy against Malaria”;
- Nadine Gordimer, from South Africa, won the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature because“her magnificent epic writing has been of very great benefit to humanity”;
- Nadia Murad, a 2018 Nobel Peace Prize laureate from Iraq, shared the award “for their efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict”;
- Rigoberta Menchu Tum, a 1992 Nobel Peace Prize laureate from Guatemala, was honored “for her struggle for social justice and ethno-cultural reconciliation based on respect for the rights of indigenous peoples”.
Two laureates were under arrest at the time of the award, which is the Peace prize for both of them: in 1991, Burmese politician Aung San Suu Kyi was honored “for her non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights“, and in 2023, Iranian human rights advocate Narges Mohammadi was recognized “for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight to promote human rights and freedom for all.”
- The Nobel Prize, history, https://www.nobelpeaceprize.org/nobel-peace-prize/history/#:~:text=The%20Nobel%20Peace%20Prize%20and,the%20greatest%20benefit%20on%20mankind%22 ↩︎
- The Nobel Prize, Nobel Prize-awarded women, https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/lists/nobel-prize-awarded-women/ ↩︎
- The Nobel Prize, all Nobel prizes, https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/lists/all-nobel-prizes/ ↩︎
- APS, “newest data shows mixed progress for women and marginalized groups in physics higher ed”, Liz Boatman, 13 October 2022, https://www.aps.org/apsnews/2022/10/mixed-progress-womtheen-marginalized ↩︎